Stop and Search: The Legal Framework

Stop and search is one of the most frequently exercised police powers and one of the most contested. The power is not a single law but a collection of statutory provisions each with different conditions, different objects of search, and different procedural requirements. The common thread is that most require the officer to have reasonable grounds for suspicion before the search can be carried out, and all require compliance with the procedural requirements of Code A of the PACE Codes of Practice.

Reasonable grounds for suspicion is an objective test: the officer must be able to articulate why, based on the circumstances at the time, they suspected the specific individual of carrying the type of article for which the power allows a search. Personal appearance, race, age, or the fact that a person is known to police are not, by themselves, reasonable grounds. Suspicion must be based on reliable intelligence, observed behaviour, or other specific articulable facts. Code A warns explicitly that reasonable suspicion cannot be based on generalisations or stereotypical images.

The principal statutory powers are: section 1 PACE 1984 (stolen or prohibited articles, including bladed articles searched for under section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988); section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (controlled drugs); section 47 of the Firearms Act 1968 (firearms); section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (terrorism); and section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (suspicion-free, but requires senior officer authorisation). Section 60AA, inserted by section 25 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, allows officers in a section 60 area to require the removal of disguises.

Monitoring and accountability mechanisms include the requirement to make a record of every search and to give the person searched a copy. The record must include the officer's name and station, the date, time, and location of the search, the grounds, the object of the search, the outcome, and the self-defined ethnicity of the person searched. Forces are required to publish stop and search data by ethnicity. The Home Office Guidance on Stop and Search (Revised 2023) and the Best Use of Stop and Search scheme set out expectations for how forces should exercise these powers proportionately and with community confidence.