Five per cent of police strip-searches are carried out on children, according to a new review in the wake of the ‘Child Q’ scandal in Hackney in 2020.

A Home Office report found over 3,000 children were strip-searched in custody from March 2021 to March 2022.

The new report came after ‘Child Q’ – a 15-year-old girl from Hackney – was strip searched by female Metropolitan Police officers at her school in 2020.

This period saw 65,336 instances across 28 of the 43 forces in England and Wales, with 3,133 being on 10 to 17-year-olds.

Amnesty International UK called this a “serious violation of children’s dignity and human rights”.

Teachers said Child Q smelt strongly of cannabis and suspected she was carrying drugs, but none were found during the strip-search.

The police failed to get an ‘appropriate adult’ in the room during the search and did not contact her mother in advance. 

In March, law firm Bhatt Murphy confirmed the teenager was taking civil action against the Metropolitan Police and her school.

She wants to obtain “cast-iron commitments to ensure this never happens again to any other child”.

In a recent tweet, crime researcher Gavin Hales said “custody officers might have become more risk averse re child detainees” due to “resource pressures”.

He added: “mitigations like constant watches that could be used in lieu of strip searches are very resource intensive.”

Mark Naylor added on Twitter that: “In custody, strip-searches are often used to safeguard them [the children] and staff.”

The data also revealed the racial disparity between adults and children. Black children made up 35% of the searches, compared with 19% for black adults.

Dr Shabna Begum, head of research at the Runnymede Trust, said this “underlines just how badly our ethnic minority children are being failed by the institutions there to protect them.”

For all ethnicities except white, children made up a higher percentage of strip-searches than their adult counterparts.

Previous Metropolitan Police data from 2018 to 2021 found 2020 had the highest number of custody strip-searches against 10 to 17-year-olds, with 2,040 having been recorded. The number dropped to 1,606 in 2021.

In 2021, the same data showed black people to be disproportionately targeted, regardless of age.

33 per cent of custody strip-searches were conducted against black people, though they make up only 13.3 per cent of the London population.

The Metropolitan Police told Eastlondonlines: “We have got it wrong in the past and we are making significant efforts to now ensure our approach puts the child at the heart of decision making, with safeguarding of that child the absolute priority.”  

They welcomed the Home Office report and have begun to make changes to “enhance our work already under way”.

Despite this, a spokeswoman from the National Police Chiefs’ Council maintained strip-searches “play an important role” in protecting the public, including those conducted on children.

She did not admit any failings by the police, but said they are taking the “concerns raised about children’s safeguarding extremely seriously”.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is currently investigating four officers for gross misconduct in connection with the incident, as well as four other strip-searches of children between 2020 and 2022.

Dame Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England, said she was “deeply concerned that police aren’t considering the safeguarding and welfare of vulnerable children”.

She added: “More action is needed … I will not be satisfied until national guidelines are changed to ensure that children are strip-searched only in the most exceptional situations and there are robust safeguards in place.”