In response to significant recent press coverage on this issue, Casey Lee Jenkins reflects on the Children’s Commissioner for England‘s latest report into the strip-searching of children.
Press articles
Disproportionality remains
The report highlights continued and concerning disproportionality with Black children still far more likely to be subjected to these intrusive powers.
A reported reduction in the overall number of strip-searches is, of course, welcome. But stark disparities remain.
The persistence of this gap points to something deeper which is that the adultification of Black children continues to shape how they are perceived. Behaviour is met with suspicion, control, and enforcement rather than safeguarding.
When strip-searching is used disproportionately, and often without outcome, it raises serious questions about necessity, bias, and the threshold for deploying such a power on children at all.
The APPG on Children in Police Custody has found that strip searches on children are consistently described as humiliating, traumatic, and damaging to trust in authority, even when carried out “lawfully”. It also identified clear racial disproportionality, with Black children significantly more likely to be subjected to strip search following stop and search encounters. Alongside this, key safeguards, including the right to an appropriate adult, are not consistently understood or applied in practice. The APPG ultimately concluded that the issue is not only operational practice, but systemic inconsistency in thresholds, safeguards, and oversight, requiring stronger national reform.
A systemic issue, not isolated incidents
This is not happening in isolation. In the The National Appropriate Adult Network‘s 2022 report on police searches, a core problem with the PACE framework was highlighted. It is too complex, too unclear, and too discretionary in the areas that matter most such as when an appropriate adult is required, what constitutes an invasive search, and how children’s rights and welfare are protected in practice.
Too much is left to interpretation. Too much depends on discretion. And too much relies on a framework that is not robust enough to ensure consistent safeguarding.
The need for reform
There needs to be a full review of the wide range of police powers that enable invasive searches, rather than focusing solely on holding individual officers accountable for what are fundamentally systemic issues.
Where thresholds are unclear and safeguards inconsistently applied, disproportionality is not an anomaly, it is a foreseeable outcome.
If we are serious about safeguarding children and addressing racial disproportionality then reform of PACE and associated guidance is essential.
What does it mean, in practice, to treat children as children within the criminal legal system? Until that question is properly answered, this pattern will persist.
