OUT OF ORDER The rise of stop and search in civil orders legislation, a new report, was launched by Stopwatch. The report highlights the alarming rise of civil orders and their impact on marginalised and racialised groups across England and Wales.
Covering areas as broad as public safety, crime prevention, and counter-terrorism, civil orders have led to mission creep as they are applied in a wider range of contexts than originally intended. As a result, they have dragged ever more people into the criminal justice system whilst failing to have any noticeable impact of crime.
The report finds that:
- Black people are subject to 65% of KCPOs, despite representing only 4% of the population.
- A Home Office Impact Assessment admitted Black men are most likely to be impacted by Serious Violence Reduction Orders, even though ‘there is no evidence of their impact on overall crime’ and an increase in SVROs ‘would not necessarily increase the number of weapons detected and seized’.
- Almost a fifth (17%) of Public Spaces Protection Orders are imposed on rough sleepers, and that Dispersal Orders target homeless people.
Habib Kadiri, StopWatch executive director, said:
For decades, civil orders have disproportionately targeted marginalised groups under the guise of tackling ‘anti-social behaviour’. By lowering the standard of proof of alleged wrongdoing, rendering compliance with orders increasingly unfeasible, and imposing even more punitive sanctions on those already caught in its net, successive governments have only equipped police forces with the means to surveil racialised people. We urgently need to overhaul this legislative framework to halt the further erosion of civil liberties and embedding of racial injustice into everyday policing practices.