New information sheds light on how the police are using their powers

BLISSFULLY blather-free, a report was released by Home Office statisticians on May 13th before any spin-doctor had been given a chance to fiddle with it. The bulletin tracked the outcomes of the 1,471 arrests of suspected terrorists made in Britain between September 2001, when fighting terrorism became a big part of police work, and April 2008, providing for the first time an overview of what is happening to those detained. Published under a new code of practice for official statistics, drawn up last year after ministers were caught massaging figures on knife crime, the report was pure, sober joy: long may the rule of the nerds continue.

Charges were brought against 35% of the suspects, which is roughly in line with other indictable (that is, serious) offences, according to the Home Office. A further 9% were dealt with in some other way: most of them deported and a handful sectioned under mental-health laws. The rest were freed without charge.

Encouragingly, 80% of those who were freed were released within just two days, and only three people were held for more than two weeks before walking free. Nonetheless, the numbers are enough to make anyone pause before considering extending the power to detain without charge, as the government proposed last year: 142 people were locked up for more than 48 hours before being freed without charge, among them racking up more than 800 days behind bars.

The report also showed that 181 people arrested on suspicion of terrorism were then charged with something else. This figure was previously unknown, because data on arrests are kept on a separate database (in the Home Office) from the data on charges and trials (in the Ministry of Justice). Boffins “did the whole job by hand”, says Paul Wiles, the Home Office’s chief scientific adviser. Some of those arrested were charged with serious offences—possessing guns or money laundering, for instance—and others with trivial ones, such as driving and drugs violations. But observers will note that a lot of non-terrorism charges have been brought using powers drafted to deal with terrorist threats.

A final curiosity is the ethnic breakdown of those detained in connection with suspected terrorism. South Asians made up 42% of the total, perhaps not surprisingly as they account for the bulk of Britain’s Muslims. But they were less likely than any other ethnic group to face charges following arrest. This sounds like an advantage, but it may imply just the opposite: that police arrest Asians on flimsier grounds than they do others.

There is lots more to be mined from the statistics, which will be updated quarterly from the autumn. But the main conclusion is that the government should never have proposed extending counter-terrorism powers last year before conducting such a basic analysis as this of the current ones.

Cracking down on illegal immigration

The Missouri way

Jun 11th 2009 | ST LOUIS, MISSOURI

From The Economist print edition

A powerful precedent is set

VALLEY PARK, a small suburb of St Louis perched on the banks of the Meramec river, seems an odd place for a fight over illegal immigration. Although there are surely some illegals about, as there are in most parts of America, there is no visible community of outsiders or labour-intensive industries to lure them. But since 2006, when Valley Park passed legislation that outlawed the hiring of illegal aliens or renting to them, the battle has raged. On June 5th the federal court of appeals upheld the town’s ban on hiring illegal immigrants. This has opened the door to the enactment of similar laws across the country.

Valley Park’s ban on renting to illegals had earlier been struck down by a lower court, but the fight continued over hiring. A local apartment-owner who uses contractors for repair work objected to being required to verify the citizenship status of her workers. But the appeals court has now ruled that the city is not barred from imposing employment regulations that go beyond existing federal rules.

A similar case, this one from Hazelton, Pennsylvania, is still pending before another federal appeals court. Unlike Valley Park, Hazelton experienced an obvious jump in illegal aliens, who were drawn to the area by its meatprocessing factories. The city cited increases in crime rates, more gang activity, higher spending on bilingual education at its public schools and on health care, and various other expenses, with no offsetting rise in tax revenues. It blamed the federal government’s lax enforcement of its own immigration laws for its fiscal burden.

Hazelton has led the way in the local ordinance movement and has been in one court or another most of the time since 2006.

A number of towns have already copied Hazelton and Valley Park, and so too has the state of Arizona, which has established its own citizenship-verification requirements. Voters in Fremont, Nebraska, recently passed a Hazelton-type law by ballot initiative; it is currently under review in state courts. Kris Kobach of the University of Missouri-Kansas City law school has advised Valley Park, Hazelton and a number of other cities on how they can impose their own requirements on illegal aliens while still remaining within the federal law. It looks as though his job is now going to be a lot easier.

The anti-terrorist hotline

Not very hot Jun 11th 2009 From The Economist print edition