The First Minister's intervention last week on stop and search, which forced Police Scotland to review its flagship crime policy, was welcome but long overdue.

Over the last twelve months, this newspaper has published over twenty articles on this flawed anti-crime initiative.

First police officers said that 'bogus' searches were recorded to inflate the numbers, followed by controversies about babies and toddlers being frisked.

However, the biggest problem was Police Scotland's reliance on non-statutory searches, which are voluntary and based on "consent".

Of the 600,000 searches recorded in the single force's first year, around 70% fell into this category.

Although England and Wales abolished this practice years ago, Police Scotland clings to non-statutory as the basis of its search policy.

Nicola Sturgeon's announcement that a Police Scotland review would likely end "consensual" frisks was a good day for civil liberty campaigners and the wider population.

However, it is another blow for a national police force set up by the Scottish Government.

After the old territorial forces made way for Police Scotland, Edinburgh's distinctive policy of regulating brothels was shattered by the force's heavy-handed approach.

Chief Constable Stephen House was then humiliated after he had to abandon his policy on armed police officers.

The stop and search rethink is yet another reminder that the governance structures for the single force are inadequate.

Although the focus this week has been on Police Scotland, the stop and search controversy reflects just as badly on the Scottish Police Authority.

After all, when the SPA reviewed the frisk policy last year, it censored parts of its own report and buried the damning statistic that Scotland searched nine times as many people as the New York Police Department.

The media and the Scottish Liberal Democrats have scrutinised the single force, not the body specifically set up to monitor Police Scotland.

Perhaps it is time for the First Minister to consider a wider review of the policing landscape, including the effectiveness of a watchdog that bears the hallmarks of a poodle.