THERE are some words and phrases, are there not, over many years which lose their potency with over-use. Any value they once possessed in conveying something immediate and worthwhile in a succinct manner become obsolete.

Governments and other agencies which seek to avoid accountability or the judgment of future generations specialise in them. The word “outcomes” is one of them and so is “transformational”. In recent years “behaviour” has begun wretchedly to be deployed as a noun and in the plural. And is there another word that starkly conveys the deplorable character of its user more than “trope”?

I fear that “reactionary” is beginning to fall into this category too and I accept my own share of the blame for its demise. Left-wing commentators attach it lazily to any form of policy-making or political conduct that they deem to be typical of Conservatives and the instincts that they feel fuel this. It conveys the sense that action has been undertaken merely to appeal to popular sentiment and that not a great deal of thinking has been applied to its consequences.

This most often occurs in the sphere of crime and punishment and was best illustrated in the responses of the UK Government and the police in the aftermath of the IRA bombing campaign in mainland Britain during the 1970s. Thus, it seemed that simply being found in possession of an Irish accent formed sufficient grounds for arrest and questioning. It led to the appalling miscarriages of justice suffered by the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four.

We saw this too following the 9/11 attacks on New York when the US Department of Homeland Security was established and “good folks” were encouraged to report “suspicious activity” by dodgy-looking people in and around, for example, your friendly, neighbourhood “petro-chemical” facility. The disastrous consequences of this approach (I hesitate to attach the word ‘unintended’ here) were thoughtfully related in Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

Occasionally though, the UK Conservative Government and the police opt for a course of action that invites the word “reactionary” and indeed seems perfectly to define the word.

Last week Home Secretary Sajid Javid reached for the easiest and least imaginative action in response to the recent upsurge in acid attacks in and around London. It’s been reported that Mr Javid wants to extend police stop-and-search powers to curb these attacks by granting them the leave to conduct checks on those they suspect of carrying corrosive substances without reason.

No evidence that a person might be intending to cause injury would be required. I’d warn new home-owners in Kensington to be cautious about carrying paint-stripping substances about their person for the purposes of re-decoration, but then we all know that people in Kensington and other neighbourhoods heavily populated by affluent white people are never targeted when it’s time to roll out another police crackdown.

Mr Javid’s response was soon backed up by one of the UK’s most senior police officers, Andy Cooke of Merseyside, who claimed that stop-and-search is the “single greatest power that the police have to target and disrupt crime”. I don’t doubt this. Any measure which relies on a minimum of brain-power and a maximum of physical intimidation will always appeal to the men who run the UK’s police forces.

In Glasgow and the West of Scotland in recent years it’s seemed that the constabulary were using stop-and-search to win prizes. In 2015 Paul Hutcheon, the Investigations Editor of the Sunday Herald, reported that nearly one in five people in the Greater Glasgow area had been frisked by police, a rate almost 20 times that of Greater Manchester. In many cases that’s enough touches to suggest the beginning of a deep and long-lasting relationship.

In the last couple of years the Scottish police’s enthusiasm for getting up close and personal with people from disadvantaged communities has waned somewhat. Nonetheless, many were still able to slake their desires under cover of the sinister Offensive Behaviour at Football Act which targeted mainly working-class youths for sporting dodgy iconography and espousing rascally sentiments about Irish history in their songs. That in many cases resulting charges were laughed out of court and the Act itself scrapped seems not to have led to any expressions of regret by police or those figures in the Scottish Government who claim to support an enlightened and civilised approach to policing.

I daresay that that recent alarming rates of acid attacks in London require some sort of response and that stop-and-search ought to be in there somewhere. What you won’t find anywhere is a desire to understand or address the root causes of gang culture in some inner-city communities. To embark on something as sophisticated and sensitive as that would require time and patience. It would also entail an acknowledgment that the policies of consecutive UK Governments in areas such as housing, long-term unemployment and social alienation have failed large sections of our working-class communities.

I’d like to see the methods of our forces of law and order in combating crime more evenly spread to include all sections of the community. And as clumsy and unsophisticated as it may be, perhaps stop-and-search would be more palatable if it were applied more equitably. Thus, they could widen its remit to include men with pin-stripe suits loitering near banks. No actual evidence that men dressed in such a manner and behaving erratically with other people’s money would be required to apprehend them and to frisk them; merely a reasonable suspicion that they might be intending to do so. Certainly, many innocent bankers might be unhappy but any sullenness would evaporate in the knowledge that this is happening for the common good and that the guilty would be stopped.

Why, constables, detectives and chief constables could also be routinely stopped and searched as they went about their business as a means of targeting the hundreds of miscreants hiding in a police uniform. People who say hice instead of house or sex instead of sacks could give rise to a reasonable suspicion that they may be on the verge of committing a white collar crime, like; oh I don’t know ... sinking their wealth in dodgy offshore trusts to avoid paying Her Majesty her due in taxes.

In time, I could quite get to appreciate the benefits of stop-and-search, but only if it were to be applied equally across all strata of society and without fear or favour. Mind how you go.