The schedule of abominable announcements from the Home Office is unrelenting. Almost every week brings with it a declaration of a new policy or piece of legislation set to harm the most marginalised in our society, and last week was no exception. In consecutive days, the Home Secretary Priti Patel announced policies to increase the powers of the police at the same time as removing their already scant accountability.

The first of these announcements was that the government would permanently lift limitations placed on police stop and search powers, enabling more officers of or above the rank of Inspector to authorise Section 60s. This gives officers the ability to stop and search a person without suspicion or ‘reasonable grounds’, increasing the arbitrary power of law enforcement over those they purport to serve. 

In an effort to outdo herself, Patel followed the stop and search announcement with an even more reckless policy: the Home Secretary declared that volunteer police officers—‘Special Constables’—would be allowed to arm themselves with tasers. Tasers are endorsed as ‘less lethal’ than firearms, but in many cases kill or cause permanent damage to those they are used against. The policy was justified by claiming it would ensure that volunteer police are ‘not at a disadvantage when facing an attacker wielding a knife or a marauding terrorist’. 

Even if one puts aside the obvious risk of arming volunteer police—who have less experience and training—it is the public, not police officers, who are overwhelmingly likely to be the victims of fatal violence. Since 1990, there have been 1816 deaths in police custody or following contact with the police in England and Wales, and liberalising the use of tasers only risks increasing this number. 

These announcements were touted as a part of a ‘crackdown’ on crime, which at best are ignorant and ill-informed, and at worst deeply sinister.

In 2014, in an attempt to decrease the number of black people being disproportionately targeted and harassed by stop and searches, the then Home Secretary Theresa May launched the ‘Best Use of Stop and Search’ scheme, aiming to assess how police forces interpreted ‘reasonable grounds for suspicion’. Even though the initiative failed to make a substantial change, it was a step in the right direction. 

The reforms made by Theresa May at least demonstrated a recognition that the use of stop and search powers was informed by stereotypes and racial bias. Whatever limited progress this signalled has been put into reverse by Patel’s announcement, and her penal logic is set to further erode trust and faith between marginalised communities and the state. 

As a black man from a community where black people have been criminalised and under-protected for decades, if you were to ask one of my friends whether they had confidence in this new initiative before repeating the arguments made by the Home Secretary, you would be rebuked—and rightly so.

In a nation where only 37 per cent of black Britons have trust and confidence in the police, retributive approaches—that fail to deter crime—will only lead to a further decline in trust between communities of colour and the police.

The argument pushed by the government is that these strategies will prevent knife crime and tackle serious youth violence, with Patel stating: ‘I stand wholeheartedly behind the police so that they can build on their work to drive down knife crime by making it easier for officers to use these powers to seize more weapons, arrest more suspects and save more lives.’ 

As is most often the case, Patel’s position was not backed by evidence, as demonstrated by police statistics. From April 2020 to April 2022, 66 per cent of stops and searches were due suspicion of drug possession, with only 15 per cent for weapons. Far from solving youth violence, expanding the arbitrary power of the police will increase racialised criminalisation and cause a rise in Black Trauma.

Black people are eight times more likely to experience tasers being drawn and discharged on them and are five times more likely to experience force at the hands of the police. The government’s agenda will deepen the already stark level of social exclusion and subjugation rooted in policing. 

What makes this reality bleaker is the intense nature of criminalisation of Black youth, which manifests in the ‘adultification bias’—a form of racial prejudice where black children are seen and treated as more mature than they are, leaving them navigating the world having been robbed of their youthfulness. This perpetuates patterns of harm and abuse as they continue to be targeted by the police and other state actors.

The Home Office’s punitive announcements should be understood as part of its wider turn towards authoritarianism, as demonstrated by recent pieces of legislation passed into law—such as the Police, Crimes, Sentencing and Courts Act and the Nationality and Borders Act—that have attacked civil liberties, criminalised refugees, and expanded the power of the state.

Any serious attempts to reduce crime would require a determination to address its root causes, but the government refuses to even recognise the existence of ‘institutional racism’ let alone commit to ending it, while tackling deprivation and inequality would require challenging elite interests—something to which it is resolutely opposed. 

In place of any meaningful policies to improve the condition of society, the government has resorted to increasingly authoritarian measures that allow it to posture as tough to its right-wing base and scapegoat already marginalised groups. At the same time, it is giving itself the ability to further criminalise those who will bear the brunt of their destructive agenda.

In the face of the government’s dangerous shift, we must be resolute to unite and organise on the ground against oppression. The recent sight of communities actively defying immigration raids—and winning—is an example of what can be achieved through collective organising against the Home Office and the state at large. 

What should remain in our minds whenever we hear a police siren is that crime and social ills will never be solved by the expansion of police violence and the arbitrary power of the state. It is through organising and empowering our communities that we can fight for social and economic equality—and that is what will put us on the path to real justice.