Organised by The Open Society Justice Initiative and the School of Law at King’s College London, the conference will look at the challenges presented to security services and policy makers to ensure that stop and search powers are used effectively without infringing people’s rights or damaging fragile community relations.
Miss Afzal, who has special responsibility for championing equality and diversity issues on a national basis, is part of a national think tank on stop and search issues.
She will talk about the need to ensure a credible system of accountability is introduced so that all stop and searches are accurately recorded to verify any disproportionality between the numbers of black and Asian people searched, versus white people.
She will also emphasise the need for training, to ensure that those undertaking a search are aware of people’s different cultures and beliefs.
In January 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that certain aspects of S44 searches (Search under the Terrorism Act) are illegal, which will inevitably impact on other categories of stop and search.
Last year nearly 200,000 searches were carried out across England and Wales, yet since the introduction of Anti-Terrorism act in 2000 there has not been one single conviction as a result of a S44 search. Said Miss Afzal: "While public safety is paramount, the need for common sense and decency must prevail. If the public has confidence in the system, then they will comply with it and it is far more likely to be effective. "To try and establish a way forward locally, Lancashire Constabulary has set up a north west user group to ask people who have been stopped to share their experiences to improve the security procedures, with regard to both training and monitoring. "Stop and search is a very emotive subject which needs to be addressed carefully and with sensitivity. Hopefully this conference will help to achieve greater understanding of the issues faced by all those carrying out the search and those being searched." The Stop and Search Conference will take place on March 18 2010, at Kings College, London.
Other speakers include Nick Hardwick of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, Victor Adebowale CBE, former chair of the Home Office’s stop and search c ommunity panel and Ben Bowling, Professor, Kings College, School of Law.
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