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On the necessity of SVROs from the court’s perspective: "[T]he most common reason for eligible individuals not receiving an SVRO where an application was made was rejection in court by the judiciary, often due to insufficient evidence or lack of necessity/proportionality." REQUIRES IMPROVEMENT

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On the impact on vulnerable populations: [S]crutiny and fair use panels identified an 'unexpected disproportionality': some homeless individuals had been subjected to multiple stop and searches. REQUIRES IMPROVEMENT

On the impact on vulnerable populations: [T]here was no robust quantitative evidence of ethnic disproportionality in the SVRO process... However... scrutiny and fair use panels identified an 'unexpected disproportionality': some homeless individuals had been subjected to multiple stop and searches.

SVRO pilot rating: REQUIRES IMPROVEMENT

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On the indefinite renewal of orders: The absence of rehabilitative elements in the order was ‘widely seen as a barrier to deterrence and sustained behaviour change’... it is not clear how SVROs will change behaviour to impact offending. REQUIRES IMPROVEMENT

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On legal safeguards and arbitrary discretion: [Some o]fficers conducted SVRO stop-searches ‘every time they encounter[ed] the individual’... there was just one stop and search incident where the SVRO legal power was used and a weapon was found, yielding a find rate of 0.3%. REQUIRES IMPROVEMENT

On legal safeguards and arbitrary discretion: [O]fficers conducted SVRO stop-searches with ‘varying levels of frequency’, some searching SVRO recipients ‘every time they encounter[ed] the individual’. However, very little was found... in searches involving homeless individuals, it ‘did not appear’ that officers were thorough, ‘nor did they appear to expect to find a weapon’... there was just one stop and search incident where the SVRO legal power was used and a weapon was found, yielding a find rate of 0.3% from 315 searches.

SVRO rating: REQUIRES IMPROVEMENT

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SVRO recipients were... significantly more likely to be stopped and searched (20.9%)... this increase may be ‘a reflection of increased police attention and detection, rather than a change in the underlying offending behaviour.’ INADEQUATE

On the risk of increased criminalisation: SVRO recipients were... significantly more likely to be stopped and searched (20.9%)... this increase may be ‘a reflection of increased police attention and detection, rather than a change in the underlying offending behaviour.’

SVRO pilot rating: INADEQUATE

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StopWatch @stopwatchuk.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

We rated the effectiveness of SVROs as follows: SVROs had no statistically significant impact on violent re-offending during the pilot period, meaning ‘the intended deterrent effect of SVROs on serious violence was therefore not observed’. INADEQUATE

On serious violence and the behavioural drivers of crime: 'SVROs had no statistically significant impact on violent re-offending during the pilot period, meaning ‘the intended deterrent effect of SVROs on serious violence was therefore not observed'.
SVRO pilot rating: INADEQUATE

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Tom concludes that the approach taken by the government to the issue (with the surveillance apparatus put in place and the intention to legitimise its use through surveillance) is not consensual, but rather 'consultation theatre'.

Passage reads: 'So, the final question is no longer just whether these systems are biased. The state’s own evidence already tells us that they are uneven, racialised, and dangerous in ways that map directly onto the disproportionality that StopWatch and other like-minded organisations have been documenting for years. The deeper question is simpler, and more political: who consented to this, and when?

If the consultation closes after the vans are funded, after the infrastructure is commissioned, and after the legal architecture is already being drafted around expansion, then this is not public consent. It is consultation theatre.'

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StopWatch @stopwatchuk.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Tom also observes that while a recent public consultation focused on safeguards, 'facial recognition is moving closer to direct street-level encounters' regardless

Passage reads: 'By the time the consultation closed, the real decisions had already been made. The consultation promises clearer rules, new oversight, and more transparency. But it also explicitly says the new framework should 'support technological development' and make police use of these tools easier to justify and more future-proof. This is the new legal patchwork: not a pause for democratic consent, but a framework designed to stabilise and legitimise powers already being expanded.

Recent events make that even harder to ignore. On 24 February 2026, the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner published his response to the consultation and warned that 'self-regulation and voluntary standards cannot be relied upon to safeguard human rights.' He argued that serious uses of facial recognition should face tighter legal restriction and, in some cases, independent pre-authorisation.

Two days later, it was reported that the Metropolitan police would begin a six-month pilot of operator-initiated facial recognition, with 100 officers using smartphone-based identity checks during stops. While the state talks about safeguards, facial recognition is moving closer to direct street-level encounters.'

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StopWatch @stopwatchuk.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

In the article, author Tom Dixon argues that 'This is not a neutral conversation about future possibilities. It is the managed public staging of a direction of travel that has already been chosen.'

Passage reads: 'While the public is being asked how (or if) facial recognition should be used, the authorities are barrelling ahead to embed it into everyday policing.

That is the real story here. This is not a neutral conversation about future possibilities. It is the managed public staging of a direction of travel that has already been chosen. The consultation itself, announced by ministerial written statement on 4 December 2025 and open until 12 February 2026, openly admits that police currently rely on a 'patchwork of common law, data protection, and human rights legislation.' It also proposes a new oversight body to set rules and check compliance. But now that the consultation window has closed, the public debate has effectively passed while the machinery of expansion remains in motion. The government is not asking whether biometric stop and search should be normalised. It is asking how to legalise what it is already scaling.

The January 2026 white paper simply extends that logic from pilot fleet to national model. What used to be framed as targeted, and exceptional is now becoming routine equipment. Suspicion is shifting from the officer on the street to the systems around them: the van, the watchlist, the algorithm, the database.'

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StopWatch @stopwatchuk.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

By self-defined ethnicity, the disparity between Black and white people in stop-searches is roughly the same as the previous year: in 2023/24, Black people in England and Wales were stopped roughly 3.7 times more often. In 2024/25 they were stopped 3.8 times more often

A timeseries graph displaying 15 years of stop-search ethnic disparity ratios between white and Black people. In 2024/25, the differential was 3.8 times (Black people were searched 3.5 more often)

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StopWatch @stopwatchuk.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

On outcomes: 15% of stop-searches ended in arrest, a small rise reflecting a long-running inverse relationship between stop-search volumes and arrests from the use of the tactic. Searches ending in No Further Action fell two percentage points from 69% to 67%

Table showing year-on-year changes in stop-searches, by outcomes and in total

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StopWatch @stopwatchuk.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

The increases are as follows - Section 60 ('violence'): from 5,288 to 5,572 searches (+5.4%) Section 342E (for Serious Violence Reduction Orders): from 63 to 294 searches (+366.7%) Section 11 (on protesters): from 3 to 46 searches

Table showing year-on-year changes in stop-search volumes, by power and in total

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Lack of trust in officers undermines safer schools model. Trauma response from young people when they see officers. Poor quality of officer-delivered presentations and workshops in schools, including scaremongering tactics.

Quote:

'The Board also elaborated on a tension between seeking to build trust and confidence in schools, and police interactions as the source of a
lack of trust and confidence overall. Members reflected that trust and confidence built through schools policing can be instantly undone when a young person encounters an officer in the community setting who does not approach them appropriately or does so in a procedurally unjust way, e.g., if they are stopped and searched
without reasonable grounds, or in a way that is traumatically invasive. For this reason, performance indicators used by MPS in the past such as the number of youth engagement events in schools or the number of police deployments in and around schools64 may not accurately measure the effectiveness of the police-school relationship'

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Here's a striking interviewee statement on how officers will seek out to work in Hackney for personal career advancements, proving they can manage perceived-to-be challenging areas.

Quote from interviewee 'YW1':

'A lot of people make professional choices to come into a borough. They kind of go, ‘Well, look, I could work in Kensington and Chelsea and, you know, find out I might be able to progress from there to another area. But if I work two years in Hackney? I could go for any job […] Let me get a piece of that.’ I hear that from teachers, from police, from all sorts. – YW1'

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Black children more likely to get a 'Merlin social services referral', higher rates of exclusion following police involvement.

Quote:

“Analysis of the sample of 59 criminal investigations of Black children found that while No Further Action was an outcome reached in 90% of reports, exclusion or suspension from school occurred in 40% of reports. 25% of Black children charged were suspects in 10 or more subsequent reports following their charge and 15% received custodial sentences.”

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"There is no evidence that a regular police presence within schools reduces youth offending or produces positive outcomes for young people."

Quote:

'Police forces should design SSPs such that school-linked officers do not have a regular presence within schools'

There is no evidence that a regular police presence within schools reduces youth offending or produces positive outcomes for young people.
Pre-existing evidence and this research indicate that a regular police presence within schools has had a harmful effect on some young people, especially those whose behaviours are recorded as crimes even where a policing response is inappropriate, due to the Home Office Crime Recording Rules. This research indicates that
police forces and schools can fulfil the aims of partnership working without a regular police presence in schools, to reduce the risk of harm
and disproportionality.

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Between Avani’s pleas to go home, and the ‘nothing more can be done here’ stare from the station officer, Suki senses the futility of the situation and decides not to take up his offer. This exemplifies how paralysing the process can feel for people who engage with it

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In summary, following ‘search guidelines based on reasonable suspicion’, officers made a 15-year-old child take her clothes off in front of them because they didn’t believe her claims Note: 🚩 ‘Reasonable suspicion’ = no evidence beyond speculation + judgments based on prior activity

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The station officer also admitted that there wasn’t enough evidence to determine whether the drugs were in Avani’s possession, but insists there was a ‘valid line of enquiry’ since Avani was ‘refusing to cooperate’ with police questioning

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He claims his officers followed standard procedure, admitting to Suki that no more drugs were found… but not before they deemed Avani’s behaviour to place her ‘at further risk of harm’ and making a referral to Social Services

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He proceeds to say: ‘we had reason to suspect she was carrying further drugs’, so his officers brought Avani into custody ‘for the purpose of searching and safeguarding to ensure she wouldn’t take the drugs herself’

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Despite her denials, the station officer believes there are reasonable grounds to suspect Avani is in possession of controlled drugs and states his colleagues have been authorised to conduct a strip search. The scene ends with an agitated Avani struggling to process what is about to happen to her

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The next time we see Avani, her friends have been released, but she remains detained. The station officer challenges her to explain why drugs were found at her feet at the tube station. Again, Avani protests her innocence, with humour, but this time is visibly anxious

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Meanwhile, in the classic soap drama convention of a character-unavailable-at-the-point-of-greatest-need, we see both her parents’ mobile phones ringing but neither of them pick up the call

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Putting two and two together, Jack then tells the officers who brought the girls in that Avani is friends with a drug dealer, which the officers interpret as a green light to return to the cell to conduct a strip search

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Elsewhere, Avani is being detained by two officers. As her parents are yet to be contacted, an appropriate adult is also present. Avani restates her innocence in response to the station officer remark that she is under suspicion for possession of class A drugs

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The same officer then spots the wallet and goes to inspect it. On finding pills, she asks Avani if she dropped it, which Avani denies. Unconvinced, the officers take the girls to Walford police station

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The girls turn to see the officers approaching them. One asks why they aren’t in school today. Avani lies, but is caught out, then proceeds to spin another story involving Lily, and asks to be let off

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