Scrapping the requirement that police need reasonable grounds to carry out a stop and search would take us straight back to the era of “sus” laws and the police being unreasonable in who they stopped and how often (Police chiefs aim to reduce legal protections for stop and search, 12 November). Alienating whole communities by relying on the individual personal bias of officers, rather than an intelligence-led approach, is not a sensible use of resources. Returning to the times when black people are up to 25 times more likely to be stopped and searched is a step back to the days of the police being seen as institutionally racist.

Many of the people blaming the rise in knife crime on the decline in stop and search ignore the evidence of other explanations such as the 40% decline in neighbourhood policing in the Metropolitan police area. Nor do they consider other approaches, such as the possible regulation of drugs to turn off the financial fuel behind some gang-related crime.

It was only a few years ago that we got rid of the open-ended section 44 terrorism powers because it was found that year after year only one in a thousand searches led to an arrest for a terrorism-related crime, and that between 2000 and 2008 no one was convicted of a terrorism offence as a result of such a stop. This lack of success didn’t stop the police trying, with 108,714 stops made during those eight years. It was a waste of valuable police time, and after eight years of cuts that time has become even more precious.

Jenny Jones

Green party, House of Lords

• With reference to the knife crime epidemic, Ann Farrington (Letters, 8 November) suggests that allowing children to be brutalised by video games should be questioned. A good point for sure, but I am bemused by the fact that no one seems to want to question the effects of adults’ preoccupation with simulated violence.

What might be the brutalising effects – on adults and on children – of the increase in explicit and graphically violent crime dramas and novels? It seems that as the acts of violence on our streets increase, so the public appetite for ever more violent “entertainment” increases.

The BBC’s Killing Eve, a story of a sickeningly sadistic female assassin, is just one of many recent examples. The author, it is said, wants people to be appalled by the mercilessness of this character but at the same time cheer her on! Lurid and gratuitous closeup camera shots are shown of each “creative murder” and multiple stabbings, shootings, poisoning, suffocating and the rest, too horrible to describe. It’s all there. This series captured 3 million viewers.

Val Honyben

Hastings, East Sussex

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition