Police union calls for new law to ensure knife-carrying youths fear being stopped and searched
The Scottish Police Federation want officers to be able to stop and search people for knives without requiring suspicion they are committing a crime.
The body representing frontline police officers in Scotland has called for legislation brought in a decade ago to be ripped up to allow knife-carrying youths to fear being stopped and searched .
The call to hand officers more authority comes amid rising numbers of young teenagers being caught with knives on Scotland’s streets by police using stop-and-search powers.
Incidents involving under 18s being found in possession of blades rose by 59 per cent last year, with children as young as 11 being apprehended.
Concerns around knife crime among young people are intensifying in the wake of three boys being convicted for the killing of 16-year-old Kayden Moy in Ayrshire last year.
New analysis by 1919 Magazine has found there were 145 instances of youngsters being caught with knives in 2025-26, compared to 91 in the calendar year of 2024.
Separate figures show that since 2020, more than 3,000 stop-and-searches have led to knives being confiscated by Police Scotland officers from youths and adults.
Statistics show that in 2025-26, 569 stops and searches were conducted when a so-called ‘bladed instrument’ was found, up slightly from 528 the previous year.
The Scottish Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, is calling for parts of the Criminal Justice Act 2016 to be redrawn to hand police better authority to stop and search people potentially carrying weapons.
Consensual searches were banned in Scotland in 2017 as part of the legislation and were replaced by a code of practice, meaning all police searches are obliged to be intelligence-led and backed by reasonable suspicion.
David Kennedy, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, has told The Scotsman that police need more powers to stop and search members of the public.
“Basically, unless police officers have got a reasonable cause, they are not going to stop and search somebody as they walk along the road”, he said.
“So what’s happening now is they will carry a knife, knowing the likelihood is the police are not going to stop and search them.”
Mr Kennedy warned that the ability to stop and search people requires “somebody seeing something or somebody saying that individual is carrying a knife”.
“It’s really difficult”, he added. “It’s making police pretty powerless.”
Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 allows officers to search people for weapons without suspicion in a designated zone to prevent anticipated violence, with the power often used at football matches.
“If you had that power in the Public Order Act that you get with the football that obviously gives police the right to search people”, Mr Kennedy said.
“We want these people who are carrying knives to have the same fear you get when you are driving your car and you look in the rear-view mirror and you see blue flashing lights.
“We want people carrying a knife to think - if the police see me, I’m going to get searched and I’m going to get caught.”
He added: “On top of that, we need more police on the street - we need that visual presence, which we don’t have.
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“Over the last 10 years, there’s been more laws brought into play and more changes to the law to control police, rather than giving them the power to actually do their job.
“The pendulum has swung far too much the wrong way. We need to get it back in the middle again. Police officers need to be able to do their job and at the moment, they can’t.”
Mr Kennedy argued that politicians “need to be bolder”.
He added: “We also need crime prevention and education. We need to understand we are in a cycle of history that we currently sit.
“If you look at Scotland over the last 100 years, every so many decades, there seems to be a surge in bladed weapons.
“I’m seeing now what’s happening when I joined the service nearly 30 years ago where innocent people are getting murdered by youths carrying knives.”
Justice Secretary Neil Gray said that that “there is no reason to ever carry a weapon, at any time”.
He added: “The Scottish government fully supports Police Scotland to take appropriate and proportionate action to safeguard public safety.
“Stop and search is a valuable tool in combating crime and keeping people safe.
“We continue to work with partners to tackle and prevent youth violence, and in particular knife crime, alongside education, diversion and mentoring programmes.
“This is supported by our investment of more than £8 million since 2023 in targeted prevention and early intervention activity in schools, hospitals and across communities to tackle violence and its harms.
“We are also investing record funding of more than £1.7 billion for policing in 2026/27 and Scotland continues to have more police officers per head of population than England and Wales.”
Scottish Tory justice spokesman Stephen Kerr, said the Scottish government’s policies had “weakened deterrence”.
He added: “Following the tragic loss of young lives to knife crime, ministers should be doing everything possible to educate young people about the devastating consequences of carrying a blade and to get deadly weapons off our streets.
“Instead, the SNP has presided over a loss of deterrence and a justice system that too often appears to put offenders before victims.”
Assistant chief constable, Wendy Middleton, said: “Intelligence-led stop and search is a valuable and effective policing tactic that helps us keep people safe in many different ways.
“This tactic must be used lawfully, proportionately and in line with the code of practice, introduced in 2017, for which we have a high compliance rate.
“The code has a dedicated section for children and provides guidance for officers when making a decision to stop and search a child using the appropriate statutory power.
“All searches carried out are subject to governance and review in line with scrutiny arrangements to confirm they comply with the code of practice being lawful, necessary and proportionate.
“We recognise that stopping and searching people is a significant intrusion into their personal liberty and privacy, and we remain committed to ensuring that people are treated with fairness, integrity and respect.”