Back in December 2020, a 15-year-old schoolgirl was strip-searched by police officers at her school in Hackney while on her period. This happened without the presence of an appropriate adult, after she was wrongly accused of having drugs on her.
Almost two years later, her story became public as the case of ‘Child Q’. Her story was so shocking that I wanted to reassure myself it was a one-off, so I used my statutory powers as Children’s Commissioner to investigate the practice of strip-searching children by police, first in London and then across the country.
My first report in 2022 proved Child Q’s case was not an isolated case, with 650 children being strip-searched by the Metropolitan police over a two-year period. The next year my investigation into the issue across England and Wales found that children as young as eight had been strip-searched and that Black children were 6 times more likely to be strip-searched than their peers.
While my latest report last August provided the fullest picture of strip-searching in England and Wales yet, revealing a child was strip-searched every 14 hours between January 2018 and June 2023.
In recent weeks strip-searching has been thrown back into the national conversation in recent weeks through powerful storytelling in Netflix’s Adolescence and BBC’s EastEnders.
Adolescence follows the story of 13-year-old Jamie, accused of murdering a classmate. During his police questioning, Jamie is subjected to a strip-search with his father acting as his appropriate adult. The scene focuses predominantly on the reaction of Jamie’s father, as the search takes place.
While just last night, EastEnders viewers witnessed 15-year-old Avani being strip-searched on the soap, after police officers had suspicions she was carrying drugs. Avani’s parents can’t be reached, and she refuses her right to the appropriate adult offered to her by the police officers, as she is strip-searched. The search portrayed is legal and permitted, in line with the Police and Criminal Evidence codes – but, just like the thousands that have taken place in real life, it is humiliating and distressing.
Dramas like Adolescence and EastEnders have the power to highlight issues that plenty of people will be unaware of, bringing them into living rooms around the country and public conversations in a way that statistics alone cannot.
The latest data suggests some signs of improvement, with lower numbers of strip-searches overall, especially in London – but the reality is that too many children are being subjected to the harrowing experience of being strip-searched.
As portrayed in the case of EastEnders’ Avani, my latest report revealed that an appropriate adult could not be confirmed to be present in 45% of searches, despite clear guidance stating that children must be safeguarded during such procedures.
My latest report on strip searching revealed that nearly half of cases (47%) resulted in an outcome of no further action being recorded, which calls into question whether such an intimate procedure was truly necessary in the first place. Many of the young people I’ve spoken to over the course of my investigations describe feeling violated, powerless and deeply distressed.
Since the case of Child Q, I have pushed for urgent reform. There has been some progress, including commitments from the Home Office to improve data collection and from police chiefs to improve officer training, but there is much more yet to do, with high levels of searches persisting.
Strip-searching children should never be part of routine policing. It must only be used as a last resort if there is an immediate risk of harm to the child or others. And children should never be put through such traumatic experiences without rigorous safeguards in place.
I will be gathering the data from police forces on strip searching once again this year, to continue shining a light on the practice until I see concrete and irreversible evidence that meaningful change is happening: fewer children being subjected to these searches, better adherence to safeguarding protocols and an end to the racial disparities that have persisted for too long.
For too many children, these are not fictional storylines but reality – we cannot afford to be complacent.
