The Home Office has released a data set regarding the number of people arrested after being stopped and searched by police. The data concerns the number of people who were stopped and searched under Section 60 and then arrested for carrying offensive weapons or arrested for other reasons. The figures showed that there were 4,280 searches under Section 60 in the year ending March 31, 2023, with 43 people found to be carrying offensive weapons. As a result, there had been 52 arrests for carrying offensive weapons.
However, the data set came with a note attached to it that reads, “Reason for arrest data is dodgy so maybe we shouldn’t publish it.” This note was swiftly removed by the Home Office following contact from BBC Verify. It is unclear why there were more arrests than people found to be carrying offensive weapons. This is not the case in previous years, according to the available data.
The Home Office claims that “reason for arrest” data helps them understand how effectively the police are using stop-and-search powers. However, the director of the National Centre for Gang Research, Dr Simon Harding, states that different forces have varying procedures for recording their data, leading to data quality issues. Habib Kadiri, director of StopWatch, a campaign group that focuses on police stop-and-search and the “overpolicing of marginalised communities,” acknowledges that the observation in question indicates a long history of problematic recording practices by police forces.
Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee chair, Labour MP Dame Diana Johnson, has expressed her concern about the difficulties in obtaining standardized data, given that the Home Office had previously faced difficulties with its statistics and data. The Office for Statistics Regulation admits that it may be clearer regarding the data’s experimental nature but points out that it is common practice to publish newly introduced breakdowns with official statistics
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