Black people are 26 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police in England and Wales

Analysis by the London School of Economics and the Open Society Justice Initiative found that there are 41.6 Section 60 searches for every 1,000 black people, compared with 1.6 for every 1,000 white people – making black people 26.6 times more likely to be stopped and searched. South Asians were 6.3 times more likely to be stopped than whites, according to the analysis of Ministry of Justice figures for 2008-09. The data reveal a marked escalation in relative searches of ethnic minorities in England and Wales. In the previous year blacks were 10.7 times more likely to be stopped than whites, and South Asians 2.2 times more likely. Researchers at the Open Society Justice Initiative, part of the Open Society Foundation supported by billionaire financier George Soros, said the British figures provided the widest race gap in stop-and-search that they had found internationally. The previous highest use of stop-and-search powers against ethnic groups was on the Moscow Metro, where non-Slavs are 21.8 times more likely to be stopped by Russian police than Slavs. A study on the Paris Metro found passengers of Arab appearance were more than seven times more likely to be stopped and in New York City blacks and Hispanics are nine times more likely to be stopped than white New Yorkers.