policedatR: a comprehensive R package for stop and search data in England and Wales.

IF 2.6 Q1 CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY

Crime Science Pub Date : 2026-01-01 Epub Date: 2026-01-28 DOI:10.1186/s40163-025-00266-6

Jolyon Miles-Wilson, Celestin Okoroji

{"title":"policedatR: a comprehensive R package for stop and search data in England and Wales.","authors":"Jolyon Miles-Wilson, Celestin Okoroji","doi":"10.1186/s40163-025-00266-6","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Research on Stop and Search in England and Wales is constrained by substantial barriers to data access, inconsistent geographic coverage, and technical complexity. This paper presents policedatR, an R package that addresses these challenges by providing streamlined access to comprehensive stop and search data from the data.police.uk Application Programming Interface (API). policedatR automates data acquisition across multiple geographic scales, enriches datasets with population estimates and geographic identifiers, and includes functions for analysing the data, including calculating ethnic disproportionality. We describe the architecture and main functionalities of policedatR and demonstrate its capabilities and utility with analyses of temporal trends, geographic variation and ethnic disparities at national (e.g. countrywide, Police Force Area) and local (e.g. sub-local authority) levels. We also provide an example of how data acquired using the package can be harmonised with other datasets (in this case the English Indices of Deprivation) to explore broader questions on stop and search and society. By transforming thousands of individual API calls into a straightforward analytical workflow, policedatR facilitates rigorous empirical research and supports democratic accountability in policing.Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40163-025-00266-6.","PeriodicalId":37844,"journal":{"name":"Crime Science","volume":"15 1","pages":"11"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13099712/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Crime Science","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-025-00266-6","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2026/1/28 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Research on Stop and Search in England and Wales is constrained by substantial barriers to data access, inconsistent geographic coverage, and technical complexity. This paper presents policedatR, an R package that addresses these challenges by providing streamlined access to comprehensive stop and search data from the data.police.uk Application Programming Interface (API). policedatR automates data acquisition across multiple geographic scales, enriches datasets with population estimates and geographic identifiers, and includes functions for analysing the data, including calculating ethnic disproportionality. We describe the architecture and main functionalities of policedatR and demonstrate its capabilities and utility with analyses of temporal trends, geographic variation and ethnic disparities at national (e.g. countrywide, Police Force Area) and local (e.g. sub-local authority) levels. We also provide an example of how data acquired using the package can be harmonised with other datasets (in this case the English Indices of Deprivation) to explore broader questions on stop and search and society. By transforming thousands of individual API calls into a straightforward analytical workflow, policedatR facilitates rigorous empirical research and supports democratic accountability in policing.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40163-025-00266-6.

查看原文本刊更多论文

policedatR：一个全面的R包，用于英格兰和威尔士的拦截和搜查数据。

英格兰和威尔士的停车和搜索研究受到数据访问障碍、不一致的地理覆盖范围和技术复杂性的限制。本文介绍了policedatR，这是一个R包，通过从data.police.uk应用程序编程接口（API）提供对全面停车和搜索数据的简化访问，解决了这些挑战。policedatR可以在多个地理尺度上自动获取数据，通过人口估计和地理标识符丰富数据集，并包括分析数据的功能，包括计算种族比例。我们描述了policedatR的架构和主要功能，并通过分析时间趋势、地理变化和民族差异来展示其功能和效用，这些差异在国家（如全国范围内、警察部队区）和地方（如次地方当局）层面上。我们还提供了一个例子，说明使用该软件包获得的数据如何与其他数据集（在本例中是英语剥夺指数）相协调，以探索有关停车和搜索和社会的更广泛问题。通过将数千个单独的API调用转换为简单的分析工作流，policedatR促进了严格的实证研究，并支持警务中的民主问责制。补充信息：在线版本包含补充资料，可在10.1186/s40163-025-00266-6获得。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Crime Science Social Sciences-Cultural Studies

CiteScore

11.90

自引率

8.20%

发文量

审稿时长

13 weeks

期刊介绍： Crime Science is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal with an applied focus. The journal''s main focus is on research articles and systematic reviews that reflect the growing cooperation among a variety of fields, including environmental criminology, economics, engineering, geography, public health, psychology, statistics and urban planning, on improving the detection, prevention and understanding of crime and disorder. Crime Science will publish theoretical articles that are relevant to the field, for example, approaches that integrate theories from different disciplines. The goal of the journal is to broaden the scientific base for the understanding, analysis and control of crime and disorder. It is aimed at researchers, practitioners and policy-makers with an interest in crime reduction. It will also publish short contributions on timely topics including crime patterns, technological advances for detection and prevention, and analytical techniques, and on the crime reduction applications of research from a wide range of fields. Crime Science publishes research articles, systematic reviews, short contributions and theoretical articles. While Crime Science uses the APA reference style, the journal welcomes submissions using alternative reference styles on a case-by-case basis.