According to a new report that details almost 3,000 searches of minors in England and Wales over four years, with children of color being the primary targets, police in the United Kingdom are strip-searching children as young as eight.
Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, released a damning report on Monday stating that 2,847 children were searched in England and Wales between the middle of 2018 and the beginning of 2022.
It showed 52% of strip-look occurred without a suitable grown-up present, which is legally necessary except in circumstances of “criticalness”.
Black children accounted for more than a third of the searches, making them more than six times more likely than the country’s total child population to be strip-searched.
De Souza described the findings as “utterly unacceptable” and stated that strip-searching children required “robust safeguards” because it was an “intrusive and potentially traumatic power.”
The Runnymede Trust, a think tank dedicated to racial equality, issued a statement that read, “Our children are being failed by the state institutions there to protect them.”
The report from last week stated that London’s Metropolitan Police Service, the largest British police force, is rife with deep-seated racism and misogyny; according to findings follow that report.
After a Black 15-year-old girl named “Child Q” was strip-searched at her school in 2020 by two female officers without another adult present, De Souza launched a report.
Despite the widespread national outrage, she was not found with any drugs, despite being suspected of possessing marijuana.
According to de Souza, the report that found evidence of a “deeply concerning practice” and “widespread noncompliance” of safeguards was prompted by “the bravery of a girl to speak up about a traumatic thing that happened to her.”
The report says that the searches were often done in unsuitable places like outside fast food restaurants and amusement parks, in the back of police vans, in schools, and sometimes even in plain sight of the public.
Additionally, the report stated that more than half of the searches were conducted without a responsible adult present.
De Souza made 17 suggestions for improving safeguards to protect children. He urged the Home Office to look at the laws and policies that govern searches and to make specific changes to the codes for police and criminal evidence.
Additionally, she requested that the National Police Chief’s Council publish a strategy to reform child searches.
Her office found that searches at 27 police departments indicate a violation of the statutory code of practice or raise concerns about the safety of children. It requested that the police watchdog be contacted about these.
