The Home Office publishes annual stop and search statistics. The headlines that accompany the release typically focus on volume — overall numbers up or down — rather than the racial disparities embedded in every year’s data. In 2024/25, those disparities are at their widest since records began in their current form.
What the 2024/25 Data Shows
In England and Wales in 2024/25, there were approximately 970,000 stop and searches under Section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and related legislation. The rate for Black people was 52 per 1,000 population; for white people, it was 7 per 1,000. The ratio — 7.4 to 1 — is the highest recorded in the Home Office’s comparable data series, which begins in 2006/07.
Mixed-race individuals were stopped at 17 per 1,000; Asian people at 13 per 1,000. The overall search rate for all ethnic minority groups combined was 28 per 1,000, compared to 7 per 1,000 for white people: a ratio of four to one.
The “find rate” — the proportion of searches that result in an arrest or the discovery of an item — is lower for Black people than for white people: 16% compared to 22%. This suggests the threshold applied to initiate searches differs by ethnicity, not merely the population searched.
The Section 60 Picture
Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 allows police to stop and search anyone in a designated area without requiring individual suspicion, authorised by a senior officer in anticipation of serious violence. It carries higher racial disparities than suspicion-based searches. In 2024/25, Black people were subject to Section 60 searches at 17 times the rate of white people in forces that made significant use of the power.
Several forces — including the Metropolitan Police, South Yorkshire, and West Midlands — account for the majority of Section 60 authorisations. The Metropolitan Police alone accounted for 64% of all Section 60 searches nationally, and data obtained by Exposed News through FOI requests shows that Section 60 authorisations in the Metropolitan Police area were overwhelmingly concentrated in boroughs with higher proportions of Black residents.
What Forces Say
The standard response from constabularies is that stop and search is intelligence-led and based on lawful grounds of suspicion or statutory power. Forces argue that disparities in rates reflect underlying differences in offending geography rather than discriminatory application. The Metropolitan Police’s most recent equality impact assessment states that searches are “not conducted on the basis of ethnicity” and that geographic concentration explains rate differences.
This explanation is contested by the available evidence. Research published by the Runnymede Trust in 2024 analysed stop and search data at ward level, controlling for deprivation and recorded crime rates. It found that racial disparities in search rates persisted after controlling for these factors — meaning geography and deprivation do not fully account for the differential application of the power.
The Legal Framework and Its Limits
Section 1 PACE requires an officer to have “reasonable grounds” for suspicion before searching. The Code of Practice (Code A) is explicit that reasonable grounds cannot be based on personal factors including race, age, or appearance. But in practice, what constitutes “reasonable grounds” is not independently verifiable in the moment: it is assessed retrospectively, if at all, when complaints are made.
The IOPC receives relatively few complaints about stop and search specifically — the power’s brief, informal nature means most people searched do not subsequently make a formal complaint. Community monitoring groups in several cities have documented incidents they say do not meet the legal threshold, but these are rarely reflected in official complaint statistics.
Reform and Its Absence
The Home Office introduced Best Use of Stop and Search (BUSS) guidance in 2014, which included a voluntary commitment by forces to reduce searches without finds and to monitor racial disparities. Several forces achieved meaningful reductions in search volumes and disparities between 2014 and 2018. Since 2018, following shifts in political priority toward “tough on crime” messaging, volumes have risen and disparities have widened again.
The current government has not introduced legislative changes to stop and search powers. The Home Office response to the 2024/25 data release stated that “officers use these powers proportionately and in accordance with the law” and directed readers to existing guidance. It did not address the widening disparity ratio.