The use of sniffer dogs has long been a contentious issue, and the campaign to see them removed from the UK's club and festival queues gained further credence after the death of 17-year-old Emily Lyon last year, according to Vice. Amber Marks, Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and author of Headspace – which concerns the absurdity of sniffer dogs and other dodgy surveillance methods said: “for a while, police dogs were deemed to be a useful means of justifying stop and searches, as they could be described as being conducted on 'objective' grounds; the idea that dogs – like machines – don't make decisions based on inaccurate stereotypes. Not only is this not the case, but recent research has shown that dogs often indicate on the basis of what they sense they want their handlers to do."
Amber Marks is also Co-Director of QMUL's Criminal Justice Centre (CJC).