Section 44 stops ruled illegal

Good news from the European Court of Human Rights, although radio reports seem to suggest that government will continue sanctioning s44 stops for the time being.

As so often with these things, it's not the existence of the power to stop and search which was the issue, it was the blanket and allegedly 'random' nature of these stops. It should be a keystone of policing in any democratic society that police can intervene in the lives of citizens only with good reason, and, if those citizens are not obviously doing something illegal, with their consent.

s44 ignores both these precepts, fatally undermining the role of consent by making it illegal to refuse the search even though no reason need be offered for it. And, of course, the searches were never going to be random and would inevitably be targeted at 'police-property' groups, thereby plainly contradicting the professed purpose of s44, which was to allow police to stop randomly. s44 stops were always targeted, and in a way much less transparent than even other types of police activity.