Schools should be “specifically excluded” as an appropriate location for a strip search, according to a new report by the children’s commissioner.
Dame Rachel de Souza said that new analysis of searches conducted by English and Welsh police forces between 2018 and mid-2022 showed that 14 of 2,847 were conducted in police vehicles or schools.
The analysis also found “widespread non-compliance” with statutory codes of practice for strip searches of children, including more than half (52 per cent) being conducted without an appropriate adult confirmed to be present.
Black boys accounted for more than a third (37 per cent) of strip searches in the analysis period.
The report recommends that the Home Office make changes to the Police and Criminal Evidence Codes in order to “strengthen the statutory safeguards for children strip-searched by police”.
It says strip searches under stop-and-search should “only be conducted at a nearby police station, medical premises or home address”.
And adds: “Schools should be specifically excluded as an appropriate location for a strip search”.
Strip searches conducted by the police under stop-and-search powers are not explicitly prohibited in schools currently, though guidelines to protect the child’s welfare do exist.
In the introduction to the report, Dame Rachel said she had “serious concerns” about the “poor quality of record-keeping”, which makes “transparency and scrutiny very difficult, and means that the numbers in this report may only be a minimum”.
“Further, I find it utterly unacceptable that black children are up to six times more likely to be strip searched when compared to national population figures,” she added.
She said she had started looking into strip searches after being “shocked and appalled” by what happened to Child Q in Hackney last year.
Child Q was a black female child of secondary age who was strip-searched by female police officers because school staff believed she smelled of cannabis and suspected that she was carrying drugs.
The search, although undertaken by police officers, took place at the child’s school and involved exposure of her intimate body parts, at a time when she was menstruating.
