... I was then reminded, however, that the conviction rate for these ethnic groups was far less, I therefore began to think that the police may be biased in their conduct of 'stop and searches' towards ethnic minorities. The accuracy in the research carried out is not of the highest standard, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not directly record the ethnicity of the defendants as they are unlikely to have visual contact with them. They do, on the other hand, have the police records and descriptions of the offenders. We can therefore see a trend in the research collected. Dr Bonny Mhlanga conducted a study in 1999, he considered cases referred to the CPS from the thirty first of September to the following October in the year 1996. His data was further analysed by himself and Barclay in 2000. His findings were; white defendants were more likely than ethnic minority ...

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