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Eight years after the Lawrence Inquiry, the question of police powers to stop and search people in public places remains at the forefront of debate about police community relations. Police are empowered to stop and search citizens under a wide range of legislative acts and the power is employed daily across Britain. Far from laying the debate to rest, the Lawrence Inquiry prompted new research studies and fresh theories to explain the o⁄cial statistics.We argue that the statistics show that the use of the powers against black people is disproportionate and that this is an indication of unlawful racial discrimination. If stop and search powers cannot be e¡ectively regulatedâ nd it seems that they cannot^then their continued use is unjusti¢ed and should be curtailed.Nothing has been more damaging to the relationship between the police and the black community than the ill-judged use of stop and search powers. For young black men in particular, the humiliating experience of being repeatedly stopped and searched is a sad fact of life, in some parts of London at least. It is hardly surprising that those on the receiving end of this treatment should develop hostile attitudes towards the police.The right to walk the streets is a fundamental one, and one that is quite rightly jealously guarded. 1

In its fifth edition, The Politics of the Police has been revised, updated, and extended to take account of recent changes in the law, policy, organization, and social contexts of policing. It builds upon the previous editions’ political economy of policing to encompass a wide global and transnational scope, and to reflect the growing diversity of policing forms. This volume explores the highly charged debates that surround policing, including the various controversies that have led to a change in the public’s opinion of the police in recent years, as well as developments in law, accountability, and governance. The volume sets out to analyse what the police do, how they do it and with what effects, how the mass media shape public perceptions of the police, and how globalization, privatization, militarization, and securitization are impacting on contemporary police work. It concludes with an assessment of what we can expect for the future of policing.

Attempts by governments to control unwanted border crossings are a defining feature of late modernity; but the suppression of cross-border mobility is not new. In pre-industrial England the `masterless men' and `valiant beggars' were subjected to harsh measures designed to curtail their mobility. In this article, we observe that border control intensifies at times of tumultuous structural change when institutions capable of preserving the emerging economic and social order are largely absent. In a globally mobile society, we argue that `flawed consumers' and `suspect citizens' are the most likely to be earmarked for exclusion. This designation links historical conceptions of `the other' with the tropes of race, class and foreignness to underpin contemporary xeno-racism.