Now you see it, now you don’t: On the (in)visibility of police stop and search in Northern Ireland
| Author | Ben Bradford,John Topping |
| Published date | 01 February 2020 |
| Date | 01 February 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1748895818800742 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895818800742
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2020, Vol. 20(1) 93 –110
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895818800742
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Now you see it, now you don’t:
On the (in)visibility of police
stop and search in Northern
Ireland
John Topping
Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Ben Bradford
UCL, UK
Abstract
Police stop and search practices have been subject to voluminous debate for over 40 years in the
United Kingdom. Yet critical debate related to the use of ‘everyday’ stop and search powers by
the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has, despite the hyper-accountable policing system
of Northern Ireland, been marked by its absence. This article presents the first ever analysis of
PSNI’s use of PACE-type powers (Police and Criminal Evidence (NI) Order 1989) – currently used
at a higher rate and with poorer outcomes compared to the rest of the UK. While it can only be
considered as an elusive power, about which detailed research evidence is markedly lacking, stop
and search in Northern Ireland seems to serve as a classificatory tool for PSNI to control mainly
young, socio-economically marginal male populations. The article provides new theoretical insight
into stop and search as a simultaneous overt and covert practice, and speaks to wider issues of
mundane police power – and practice – within highly contested and politically fractured contexts.
Keywords
Police powers, Police Service of Northern Ireland, social control, stop and search
It is almost impossible to think about Northern Irish policing without attending to the
wider politics of the ‘post-troubles’ era, and particularly the Report of the Independent
Corresponding author:
John Topping, School of Social Sciences, Education & Social Work, Queen’s University, 6 College Park,
Belfast, BT7 1LP, UK.
Email: j.topping@qub.ac.uk
800742CRJ0010.1177/1748895818800742Criminology & Criminal JusticeTopping and Bradford
research-article2018
Article
94 Criminology & Criminal Justice 20(1)
Commission for Policing in Northern Ireland (ICP, 1999; Topping, 2015). Even in 2018,
the police reform process that created the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI)
retains its ‘near-mythic status’, as a site ‘of pilgrimage for officials from around the
world anxious to learn its lessons’ (Mulcahy, 2008: 129). Yet, in the context of this reform
narrative, and the vast accountability machinery that acts as a general guarantor to
PSNI’s status as the most overseen, human rights compliant police service in the western
world (Topping, 2016), curious lacunae exist regarding specific police powers and prac-
tices and, in particular, those associated with stop and search. As arguably the most high-
profile police power in England and Wales (Bowling and Phillips, 2007; Bradford, 2017),
stop and search has until recently been something of a ‘non-issue’ in Northern Ireland –
politically, socially and operationally. Even recent developments in Scotland, where sig-
nificant debate and contest has emerged, are yet to make it over the Irish Sea (Murray,
2014a, 2014b).
There are, we contend, two primary reasons for this lacuna. The first, related to the
police reform process, is the political emphasis on policing in Northern Ireland being
‘seen to be normal’. Significant energy has been invested by the PSNI and the wider polic-
ing structures in promoting the ‘success’ of community policing (a central plank of the
ICP reforms), cementing the centrality of good police–community relations (Topping,
2008). As we describe below, standard practice is transmuted into good practice, making
difficult any discussion of standard policing tools that might somehow be ‘problematic’.
The second reason is the persistent, if diminishing, terrorist threat in the country, cur-
rently classified as ‘severe’ by MI5 (Seymour, 2017). The ongoing (mainly dissident
Republican) terrorist campaign against members of the PSNI and security forces has
served to pull operational and political attention away from the mundanity of ‘everyday’
policing and focused on the exigencies of national security (McDonald, 2017). This has,
paradoxically, created something of a ‘cool’ policy climate – or perhaps micro-climate
– in the otherwise ‘hot’ policing arena of Northern Ireland, allowing use of stop and
search to grow in a way analogous to Scotland, prior to 2014 (Murray and Harkin, 2017).
‘Everyday’ stop and search powers in the country – underpinned almost exclusively by
the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 (PACE) and the Misuse
of Drugs Act 1971 (MDA) – amid these twin pressures, have been prioritized down and
out of sight, as an inconvenience to the loftier politics of policing being seen to ‘be gotten
right’ (O’Rawe, 2003: 1015). This relative invisibility, in a way both like and unlike
Scotland before Murray’s (2014a) ground-breaking research, has persisted in the face of
evidence that a recurrent problem with stop and search does exist (Bradford, 2017); coun-
tenanced by the fact the power has failed to have been referenced once in the past decade
of policing plans set forth by the Northern Ireland Policing Board (NIPB) (Topping,
2017). Nonetheless, and very significantly, over the period 2004/2005 to 2015/2016 use
of PACE-type stop and search in Northern Ireland has actually increased by 74%, and is
now used at a significantly higher rate than in England and Wales or Scotland (Bradford,
2017; Hargreaves et al., 2017; Murray and Harkin, 2017; PSNI, 2017b).
In this article we provide the first ever, substantive acadmeic analysis of ‘everyday’
police stop and search powers in Northern Ireland. At a broad level, the article examines
what widespread use of stop and search powers indicate about the maintenance of social
order in a highly contested, politically fractured context. The article proceeds by
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