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Police Powers and Procedures in England and Wales 2011/12

NCJ Number
242332
Date Published
April 2013
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This document presents statistics on police powers and procedures in England and Wales for the year 2011-2012.
Abstract
This report from the Home Office in the United Kingdom presents statistics for the year 2011-2012 on police powers and procedures pertaining to specific police actions. The statistics in the report deal with arrests, detentions, road checks, intimate searches, stops and searches, breath tests, and fixed penalty notices. Analysis of the data found that 1) 1.2 million persons were arrested for recorded crimes in 2011-12, a decrease of 9 percent from 2010-11; 2) the number of recorded crimes decreased by 4 percent over the same period; 3) the police stopped and searched 1.1 million persons and/or vehicles under section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) in 2011-12, a decrease of 7 percent from 2010-11; 4) resultant arrests fell by 6 percent; 5) 46,961 stops and searches were made in anticipation of violence and 50 percent of all stops and searches were for suspicion of drugs; 6) the number of fixed penalty notices issued for motoring offenses decreased 18 percent to 1.5 million; and 7) the number of screening breath tests conducted in 2011 decreased 7 percent to 685,992. Data for this report were obtained from 43 local police forces in England and Wales for the period 2011-2012 as well as statistical data from the Office for National Statistics. Trend data are also examined in the report for the period 2002-2003 through 2011-2012. Specific breakdowns are included by offense group, sex, and self-defined ethnicity. Tables and figures