Concentrated policing: Inequality metrics and racial disparities in stop-and-search

Abstract Persistent ethnic disparities in stop-and-search are frequently interpreted to be the result of individual officer bias, yet the organizational and spatial structuring of police activity remains comparatively underexamined. Applying inequality metrics, including Gini coefficients, top-share statistics and coefficients of variation, this study analyzes 9,904 stop-and-search encounters recorded by Staffordshire Police (2020–22) to quantify the spatial and organizational concentration of policing. Stop activity is highly clustered: the top 10% of neighbourhoods account for over half of all encounters, and a small cohort of high-use officers conducts nearly half of all stops. Minority contact is amplified because policing is concentrated in the county’s most deprived and ethnically diverse areas. Recalibrating denominators within Stoke-on-Trent substantially attenuates apparent disproportionality, illustrating how measurement choices shape disparity estimates. The findings suggest that while officer discretion remains relevant, disparities are also embedded in patterns of deployment, tasking and social geography. Explanations focused solely on individual officer cognition and unconscious bias, therefore, risk overlooking the structural and organizational dynamics through which disproportionate exposure is produced.