Black girls three times more likely to undergo invasive strip-search by Met police

[DerekFaker]

This sadly won't be a surprise to many. But now Liberty have analysed data obtained via a Freedom of Information request:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/06/black-girls-three-times-more-likely-to-undergo-invasive-strip-search-by-met-police

Black girls three times more likely to undergo invasive strip-search by Met police

Data analysed by Liberty Investigates shows almost half of girls subjected to strip-searches between 2017 and 2022 were Black

I am not surprised by this, after the other recent revelations. Particularly the recent investigations into strip searching of girls at school.

Facts like this and the maternal health report really drive home how embedded racism is into it society. It’s sometimes hard to see individual acts as definitely being racism. A bit like how you can’t look at one bad storm and say, global warming caused this, but when you look at the figures en masse, you see how enormous the problem really is.

Shocking, but given some of the accounts that have come out not surprising. And I'm better these girls are being triply victimised by being judged and treated as older than they are.

Christ on a bike

as a PP says, it’s only by looking for patterns that this kind of prejudice becomes obvious. It’s good to see Liberty doing something useful

Young people have told StopWatch they were strip-searched without an appropriate adult present, subjected to aggressive use of force, denied access to sanitary products while in custody, and released from police stations in the middle of the night without knowing how to safely get home.

for fucks sake

Of all the stop and searches Liberty Investigates analysed, 75% resulted in no further action being taken, suggesting many did not help to prevent or prosecute a crime.

this tells me that strip searches are used as a form of punishment

This isn't new, interesting how this has been in the news for a few weeks and only now just been posted on Mumsnet.

I like many other Black women have similar experiences from school

it doesn't sound great. but the real stat is the frequency of:

a) black searches with no further action; vs
b) white/other searches with no further action.

a 'good' policy would more or less equalise the two. maybe this one does, maybe it doesn't?

Did you read this bit?

Of all the stop and searches Liberty Investigates analysed, 75% resulted in no further action being taken, suggesting many did not help to prevent or prosecute a crime.

@hallouminatus 75% of these searches no further action was taken. So what criminal activity is being prevented or prosecuted as a result of the large majority of these searches?

this tells me that strip searches are used as a form of punishment

Punishment for what?

(I already know the answer.)

Yes I did, but as a PP pointed out, there are no figures compared no further action for black girls vs other girls, so this in itself is not evidence of racism. I also agree with PP that "it doesn't sound great".

I work on the issue as well as other issues and yes it is racism. Racism isn't just racial slurs, the Casey review admits that Black Londoners are over searched and under protected, and concludes there is institutional racism. The disproportionate stop and searches and strop searches are racist.

The children's commissioners own report further highlights the impact on Black children
https://assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2023/03/cc-strip-search-of-children-in-england-and-wales.pdf

It's a disgrace, and further evidence of institutional racism in the police service.

I don't have any evidence, but I think it is at least plausible that black girls may be disproportionately victims of child criminal exploitation. Such a disproportionality (if it exists) could account for some or even all of the disproportionately in strip searches. Or not. Has anyone done any research or analysis on this?

Really @hallouminatus ? You’re entirely happy to make such a claim - about me - on no evidence whatsoever?

Excellent ….

It's eternally annoying when media don't link to the actual study so you can check it yourself. I did find the article on Liberty Investigates here: https://libertyinvestigates.org.uk/articles/black-girls-nearly-three-times-more-likely-to-be-subjected-to-most-invasive-strip-search/ . It's rather light on details of their methodology or specifics.

What I could tease out of it was that 110 girls were strip searched, over a period of 2017 to 2022 incl. So that figure is for six years. I couldn't find any more detailed breakdown than "London". Population 9million at last census. That's far too broad to get a clear picture. I hardly think crime and criminal investigations are evenly distributed across all of it. In fact we know they are not. So if you want to compare any racial discrepancies with the local population you need something a lot more granular for where they were conducted for a start. There's an alarming lack of methodology shown in this "study". But that's pretty typical when I looked down the list of funders and saw Open Society (again).

It says that 75% of stop and searches (note, this is not the strip searches), no further action was taken. I mean, police aren't psychic. Even if you ignored the cases where police officers chose to dismiss someone with a verbal warning and took this figure as a given indicator of actual found cause for searching someone, 1 in 4 hit rate is pretty good. I repeat, their 75% figure isn't for the strip searches. Weasel wording in the article. Possibly more so as what it actually refers to is the Stop and Searches which "Liberty Investigates analysed". So how many of the 9,000+ stop and searches in that six year period did Liberty Investigates actually analyse? They don't say. It could be thousands. More likely it's hundreds at most and I'd guess fewer. They also don't say how they picked the cases they analysed? Again, their methodology is hidden. But based on the organisations profile and their backers list, I'd say they almost certainly had a goal of proving racial disparity when this study was commissioned. Which actually raises another point, the most valuable element they could share - though it would still be inconclusive without a lot more controls - would be how many of the searches led on to further action divided by race. That would be the figure was actually suggestive as to strip searches being based on discrimination rather than probable cause. And presumably they must have this figure. But it's the one they most conspicuously omitted.

What claim have I made about you (or about anyone else)?

This isn't new, interesting how this has been in the news for a few weeks and only now just been posted on Mumsnet.

I like many other Black women have similar experiences from school

Not saying that this isn't the case on this report, but also there is a problem with MNHQ deciding that they dont think issues like this should be on FWR (what they call sex and gender).

I started a thread based on a Black woman talking about the racisim she had experienced and MNHQ decided it shouldn't be here but on "chat".

I asked them to move it back but they refused.

We have definitely discussed Child Q and then the subject more generally before. I think you may be right and it got moved to Chat.

I've been trying to compare the Liberty figures to the Child Commissioner ones and haven't suceeded.

What isn't clear is why when stop and search has been shown not to be an effective method of policing, why it is continuing, Let alone stop and strip search.

And this has been stope and search has been shown to be carried out in a racially biased way.

The Child Q situation was slightly different in that the school asked the police to come. And the school allowed a strip search to be carried out ie they didn't implement any safeguarding procedures even though they have the care of children whilst at school.

Made worse by the fact that the school and Hackney council then covered up this so that parents / guardians continued to send children to that school unaware that it had collaborated with this abuse of the young woman.

I have a similar recollection.

Back to the main issue. There are few things that I can't tolerate reading. Strip searching young people is one. It is so utterly depraved, perhaps sometimes unavoidable, but given the figures here, that cannot be argued to be the case.

I'm not for defunding the police or getting rid of them in general, but The Met (which I'm assuming did most of these) is an organisation with rot so deep it's a writing pit of maggots in places. In what sort of sick world would you want to strip search young blank women? Anybody in fact, but there's clearly an appetite for this group.

It makes me want to vomit - and I'm not exaggerating. I am fed up of police forces declaring they're not institutionally racist/misogynistic, or it's "a few bad apples". Like fuck it is. Because for every bad apple, there are ones around who either don't want to or aren't able to report.

If police forces were strip searching white girls from fee-paying schools 75% more than other groups of girls, there'd be heads rolling.

It says that 75% of stop and searches (note, this is not the strip searches), no further action was taken.

I was alarmed to read initially this was strip searches, but as you’ve shown that’s not the case and that the study is missing a lot of key details. If we have no comparisons with stop and searches within races I’m not sure how we can respond to this. Theres not enough details.

The one thing I can say from this is that I don’t think children should be strip searched at all. I just don’t. It would have to be for reasons of their safety for me to support it at all.

@aweegc
"If police forces were strip searching white girls from fee-paying schools 75% more than other groups of girls, there'd be heads rolling."

Regardless of race, girls from fee-paying schools are going to live in areas with far lower crime rates so it would be very odd for their areas have the same level of policing and same rates of probable cause as other areas. Which is why earlier I said that drawing this as a category across the 9 million people in the London area (they never define in their report the area, they just say "London") was inadequate. You have to compare like for like if you're trying to isolate a single variable like race.

Also, just to keep things accurate, the 75% figure firstly is for all stop and searches, not strip searches. Secondly it refers to the number of cases that didn't go forward which despite the fact they must have this information and that it would be the most useful figure, they didn't compare for race. I'm not sure people who wish to demonstrate racism would actually want this figure to be any "better" as greater equality in further actions taken whilst disproportionality in searches remained the same would indicate that racial discrimination in searches worked. Which is hardly what I imagine you (or Open Society) are trying to show.

@Whaeanui
"The one thing I can say from this is that I don’t think children should be strip searched at all. I just don’t. It would have to be for reasons of their safety for me to support it at all."

It should certainly be done by someone of the same sex and in private conditions. But in the USA it was very common for adult drug dealers to send out minors to sell drugs due to their immunity from prosecution. I'll add again that these 110 figure was over the course of six years. You can't have a situation where anyone can just stuff some drugs or a knife in their knickers and be safe. I'm not disagreeing with you that there likely is more that needs to be done. But I don't go as far as you to say it shouldn't be done. I'd also argue that intervening in a kid being used to sell drugs at a young age is something that is for their safety (and their schoolmates as they'll be used to sell drugs to other kids).

If a police officer can say "Hand it over, don't make us strip search you," a lot of kids will simply hand it over. And "it" can be pot, heroin, a knife... "Hand it over or we'll just let you walk away," doesn't have the same effect when you gt into real policing. It's messy. I actually find 110 total strip searches across 9 million people in six years lower than I would guess.

If children were never to be strip searched, there would be a greater incentive for criminals to exploit children, very likely resulting in more children being exploited. An outright ban would not be for children's welfare and safeguarding.