Police ‘failing in duty’ as they strip-search children in patrol cars
POLICE are strip-searching children in their patrol cars, the Children’s Commissioner has disclosed in a “disturbing” new report.
Almost 3,000 children were stripsearched by police in England and Wales between 2018 and mid-2022, according to the report by Dame Rachel de Souza.
Nearly a quarter of incidents involved a child aged between 10 and 15, while the youngest recorded case concerned an eight-year-old. The findings, published today, warn that “police are failing to properly safeguard children”.
Among 2,847 cases identified by Dame Rachel were 14 examples of children being strip-searched inside police vehicles or schools.
While the location was not recorded in 45 per cent of cases, other places where children were searched included private businesses, takeaway outlets, and amusement parks.
Furthermore, 1 per cent were conducted within public view, and 6 per cent of strip-searches were carried out with at least one officer of a different gender than the child being searched present. More than half took place without a designated appropriate adult present, showing widespread failures to comply with statutory codes of practice for strip-searching children.
Dame Rachel said: “The findings of this report make for disturbing, but sadly not surprising, reading. This data, combined with that which I received from the Metropolitan Police last year, is the clearest indication yet that what happened to Child Q was far from an isolated incident.
“I have severe concerns at the ethnic disproportionality shown in these figures, and at the lack of appropriate protection for children during what is often a traumatic and humiliating experience.
“It bears repeating that there is sustained attention on this issue not because of a police whistle-blower or a government report, but thanks to the bravery of a 15-year-old girl in speaking up. Without her, these failures would have gone uncovered and unnoticed. “We urgently need to strengthen guide- lines around strip-searches, with oversight and inspection to ensure police forces follow these properly, and to robustly challenge a culture that has allowed widespread failures to go unchallenged.”
The case of “Child Q” concerned a 15-year-old black girl who was stripsearched at her school in Hackney, east London, in 2020. Details of her case were revealed last year and drew widespread condemnation.
During the incident, she was removed from an exam and taken to her school’s medical room to be stripsearched by two female Metropolitan police officers, who were looking for cannabis. Her teachers remained outside,
no other adult was present, her parents were not contacted, and no drugs were found.
Dame Rachel’s report also found that black boys accounted for more than a third (37 per cent) of strip-searches. Black children are also more than six times more likely than their white counterparts to be strip-searched, the report found. Further data show that 36 per cent of black children trust the police, compared to 75 per cent of white children. The commissioner made a series of recommendations around strengthening national guidelines for stripsearching, improving data to drive transparency and accountability and improving practice and compliance in all police forces.
She stipulated that schools should be excluded as an appropriate location for a strip-search, and parents or guardians should be informed before a strip or intimate search of a child in custody or under stop and search powers.
A Home Office spokesman said: “No one should be subject to strip-search on the basis of race or ethnicity and safeguards exist to prevent this.”