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Mark Brown's avatar

For the last 4 years I have used a ‘critical analysis’ around ethnic disproportionality of stop & search in Dorset in my university lectures focusing on Issues in Law Enforcement (the module) as a way of explaining how certain anomalies can distort the statistics…in particular back in 2011/12/13 when Dorset was second only to the Met for the number of stop & searches of black males out all 43 forces I highlight this…when that realisation comes to bare that it’s not purely an ‘institutional’ issue there’s never a single question raised from the students and they understand the phenomena that has occurred and why…it’s all about context and going deeper than the statistics being taken at face value…which is often a mistake to do so…it’s about understanding a problem so you can then determine a solution…and the fact that the govt has in the past failed to do so when auditing and so has the SLT in Dorset at this juncture gives cause for concern here…they above anybody else should understand this…the last thing you need to do is create problems that don’t exist or exist in the form that is perceived so it is vital that a critical eye is cast and only when the problem is verifiable make efforts to resolve things…if not explain your rationale and defend your position accordingly…simply admitting to there being a bigger problem than it is just makes it harder to rectify things as it’s either a false positive or leads to perverse outcomes…neither of which are healthy or helpful in the world of modern policing

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Dave Marshall's avatar

Institutionally incompetent a more apt label perhaps (and not just Dorset)

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