Reasons for police stop and searches 2019/20

Data on the amount of stop and searches carried out by the police in England and Wales under section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) in fiscal year 2019/20, by reason for the search, shows that the most common reason by far was drugs. In total, the police made over 329 thousand stop and searches under PACE for that reason.

Police stop and searches in England and Wales under section 1 of PACE* in 2019/20 , by reason for search

Characteristic	Police stop and searches
Stolen property	54,831
Drugs	329,496
Firearms	4,211
Offensive weapons	85,667
Going equipped	38,077
Criminal damage	3,858
Other	9,676

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Release date

October 2020

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Region

United Kingdom

Survey time period

April 1st, 2019 to March 31st, 2020

Supplementary notes

*PACE= Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The section 1 legislation 'gives police the power to search persons and/or vehicles for a range of items including stolen property, offensive weapons, controlled drugs or evidence that a person is a terrorist.'
* 'Other' includes searches conducted for fireworks, etc and searches under section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
The source states that Avon and Somerset were unable to accurately categorize the reason for a number of section 1 stops and searches in 2016/2017. The unknowns have been included in the 'other' category.
This statistic is using original data from the Government Digital Service and includes copyright material from © Crown, licensed under the Open Government License v3.0

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