ALMOST 200 children were strip-searched by Thames Valley Police between 2018 and 2022, figures have shown.
The Children’s Commissioner Rachel de Souza, who obtained the data from police forces across England and Wales, called for more ‘robust safeguards’ for the ‘limited situations’ where strip-searching youths was necessary.
She said police forces in England and Wales were ‘large unable to account for the necessity, circumstance and safeguarding outcome of every strip search of a child that they conduct’.
Dame de Souza added: “I will not accept that the power to strip search is being used responsibly until that is the case.”
The report was commissioned last year after 15-year-old girl ‘Child Q’ was taken out of an exam at her school in London over concerns she might have cannabis and searched by Metropolitan Police officers.
Figures showed that Thames Valley Police was in the top 10 of police forces to use the practice of strip searching as a proportion of children living in its area.
Overall, 181 children were strip-searched between 2018 and mid-2022, representing six per cent of all searches.
The search rate was around 0.09 per cent of the total population of children aged 10 to 17 living in the Thames Valley, the Children’s Commissioner’s report said.
That put Thames Valley Police seventh in the table of forces with the highest number of strip-searches when compared to child population.
Responding to the new figures, Thames Valley’s assistant chief constable Dennis Murray told JackFM: "It is vital that we as police Forces act with legitimacy and are trusted by the public.
"The report by the Children's Commissioner is a vital one and we will be looking closely at the findings and recommendations to make sure that any interaction we have with a child is held to a higher scrutiny and that we are protecting children rather than harming them.”
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He said that Thames Valley had reviewed its policies in the wake of the incident involving ‘Child Q’ in London last year. “We have made changes as recommendations have been made nationally,” Mr Murray added.
The senior officer said children would be treated with ‘respect and dignity’ and that officers would ‘work to protect them’.
Last year, the force launched a new scrutiny board – chaired by former senior Crown prosecutor Calvin Wilson – to oversee the implementation of its Race Action Plan.
Mr Wilson told the Oxford Mail at the time that strip-search of ‘young black men’ was a ‘burning issue that’s unaddressed’.
“There’s a need to re-calibrate the trust and confidence the black community has in the police,” he said.
“We have to immediately make a dent in the stop and search events. The ones that are not productive. The ones that occur where no further action is taken. The ones that cause lots of trauma – long-lasting trauma – to young black men and women. That is, for me, the most important task.”
Figures published in 2021 showed that in the Thames Valley, black people were 4.4 times more likely to be stopped than white people, compared to 4.9 in 2019-20.
According to the Children’s Commissioner’s report, nationally black children were six times more likely to be strip-searched.
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