Reforming police stops in Spain: Evidence from the evaluation of new pilot projects

• In Event: The Impact and Regulation of Police Stops: An International Perspective

Abstract

In Spain, there have been few empirical studies of police stops, and there is no official data that provide reliable information on them. Against this backdrop, international research on police stops sponsored by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) in the mid-2000s, confirmed patterns of “ethnic profiling” within Spanish police agencies involving the deliberate targeting of people from minority ethnic groups. Subsequently, OSJI has supported a number of reform initiatives with Spanish police departments aimed at reforming stop practice. Taking inspiration from reforms pioneered in England and Wales, reform practices have included new departmental policies governing stop encounters, the requirement for officers to complete stop records and provide a copy to the person stopped, monitoring patterns of stop activity, and close collaboration between police and community representatives over stop policies and monitoring. The paper will present results from the most recent pilot projects, and place them in the context of outcomes of earlier efforts. In doing so, it will discuss the overall effectiveness of the reform model in the Spanish context, and consider its relevance to the future of Spanish policing.

Authors

• Lorea Arenas García, Andalusian Interuniversity Institute of Criminology (University of Malaga)

• Elisa Garcia-España, University of Malaga, Spain

• Joel Miller, Rutgers University