Stop and search paper challenges view that policy was ‘Police Scotland problem’

A criminal law academic has been jointly awarded a prize for an article on stop and search in Scotland.

Dr Kath Murray, an independent policing and criminal justice researcher, has been awarded the British Society of Criminology Policing Network joint-author prize, with Dr Diarmid Harkin, a lecturer in criminology at Deakin University, for their article on the rise and fall of intensive stop and search in Scotland.

Challenging the widely-held perception that intensive stop and search was a ‘Police Scotland problem’, Murray and Harkin show that, prior to reform, a low-scrutiny policing climate, coupled with minimal political engagement, allowed a policy of unregulated stop and search to pass unchallenged for around two decades.

The paper goes on to show how the policy was swiftly dismantled in the heated environment that followed centralization.

The article concludes, first, that police legitimacy and reputations can owe a debt to political environments that encourage either ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ scrutiny and analysis and, secondly, that more heated political environments (often disparaged by academics and criminal justice practitioners) can drive accountability and contribute to more progressive outcomes.

The article is open-access and is available here