This book takes a quantitative, empirical, approach to the police power of stop and search, examining its history, effectiveness, the public response, the problem of ethnic disproportionality and the possibility of its reform.

1. Introduction

2. Police stops and the production of order

3. The problem of legitimacy

4. The social and geographic distribution of police stops (in theory)

5. The social and geographic distribution of police stops (in practice)

6. The distribution of stop and search: Evidence from Police Force Areas

7. Stops, trust and legitimacy

8. Policing as classificatory action

9. Conclusion

Ben Bradford is Departmental Lecturer in Criminology in the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, UK. He has collaborated with the London Metropolitan Police, the College of Policing, Police Scotland and other agencies on research projects concerned with improving police understanding of public opinions and priorities.