Black children 11 times more likely to be strip-searched in England and Wales than white peers

Report says black children over-represented in strip-searches by police between 2018 and 2022

An official report accuses police of the widespread abuse of their power to strip-search children, with black children 11 times more likely than their white peers to be selected by officers for the ordeal.

Data collected by the children's commissioner found there were at least 2,847 recorded strip-searches of children pre-arrest across England and Wales between 2018 and 2022 under stop and search powers.

About one-third of all strip-searches took place in London, which means children in London were more than twice as likely to be strip-searched compared with what the share of children in the capital would indicate.

Black children were 6.4 times more likely to be strip-searched compared with what their share of the population would indicate. For Asian children, it was 1.1 times/10% more likely.

White children were 44% less likely to be strip-searched compared with what their share of the population would indicate. Based on their respective shares of the population, black children were 11 times more likely to be strip-searched compared with white children. It is worth noting that all results are based on police reports (ie police-attributed ethnicity), that's why there were so few mixed-race children in the sample.

51% of strip-searches led to no further action, which implies a fairly high rate of failure, which is disturbing given the drastic nature of the police action.

Less than a third of the cases (31%) led to arrest.