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

NeverDropYourMooncup

That's up to the schools - not sure how they can effectively search the pupils if they bring drugs, weapons, stolen items, going equipped items into schools

What I mean is if you detain a child, and don't do a search, or don't do a strip search. Then they later harm themselves (or others) using a weapon or drugs they had hidden under their clothes or within their body.

Im just wondering about the effectiveness of strip searches. I suppose the rate of anything illegal being found is part of that as well.

Clymene · Today 13:00
And I also cannot imagine a scenario where strip searching a child - particularly a girl - without their parent being there is ever okay. It's utterly barbaric.

What if its the parent who has given the child the drug to sell at school?

What if the parent is too intoxicated to attend?

What if the parent refuses?

RoseslnTheHospital · Today 16:40
What I mean is if you detain a child, and don't do a search, or don't do a strip search. Then they later harm themselves (or others) using a weapon or drugs they had hidden under their clothes or within their body.

If you didn't have a power to search them at the time - you couldn't search them. If they had a weapon and later use it on someone there is very little could be done to prevent it. They also could have picked up a weapon after they were stopped.

People that carry drugs and other stolen items are not daft. They know they is a chance they will be searched by police. So they have a method to get rid of the items quickly without them being seen. Unless of course it has been a dynamic type stop.

They can't if the child doesn't consent. That's the point. So those things will be in schools, along with tools for self harm. Because if a child won't say if they've got SH blades or drugs on them, the damage that the Police will cause them means it's a choice between traumatising/violating a child on the offchance or hoping to God that they're telling the truth.

Total straw man.

Ask them first. As you would in any other situation. This is assault.

@Fallingirl
"According to the date reported, white girls were also disproportionately searched, but nowhere near the level of black girls."

Where did you find the data? I went through the entire report - in fact I was the one that linked it since the Guardian article didn't bother. I couldn't find the data itself anywhere. Just their selective conclusions. I couldn't see any comparison figures to boys.

@RoseslnTheHospital
"Stop and search can become a strip search though, and not in a police station? Is that standard?"

By the reports only figures strip searches comprise 1 in every 818 stop and searches. So it's clearly very atypical. And of the strip searches 1 in 4 of them lead to further action. So clearly they're quite effective at finding something to proceed on and that's just at the officer's discretion. Verbal "don't let me catch you again"'s are a thing.

@Redebs
"The fact that a disproportionate number who are subjected to this abuse are Black is absolutely disgraceful."

Except, again, we don't know that. We have a statement by a group with an agenda that includes no underlying methodology and at least two glaring faults (no racial comparison of cases going forward and not controlling for demographics of the area - they treat London as the lowest level of granularity independent of levels of policing).

@NeverDropYourMooncup
"Im just wondering about the effectiveness of strip searches. I suppose the rate of anything illegal being found is part of that as well."

The studies states that in 1 in 4 cases the strip search leads to further action. That's pretty high especially as some of the cases where it doesn't go forward will have evidence but the police use their discretion not to go forward. Well, actually the report doesn't say 1 in 4. It says "75% leading to no further action" because 75% sounds high and they want to create the impression strip searches are done without cause. The fact that female strip searches by their own figures are just 0.012 of all female stop and searches shows they're very rarely carried out.

I've probably posted enough on this thread now. Really it doesn't matter at all as no matter the issues with this report I or others here point out, the Guardian has its headline and the vast majority will never bother to look into it any deeper than that. They now "know" that Black girls are routinely being stripped by police because of racism and that's that.

Much as the Guardian does with any article on trans issues.

So a school pupil who is bringing drugs into the school to deal to their friends can do so unhindered - as they will never consent to a search. And there is nothing the school or the police can do?

They are not going to admit to it are they - if they are carrying items such as drugs

It is possibly due to the fact that there is plenty of evidence that black people are more likely to be stopped and searched. It isn’t a leap to think, although the methodology isn’t perfect in this study, that the same is true of strip and searches. Then there are police constabularies which are releasing their own reports which back up the Guardian’s headline https://www.suffolk.police.uk/sites/suffolk/files/191126_n_bland_stop_and_search_six_monthly_report_september_2019_latest_dcc_changes.doc

As to your London comment, black people are 8 times more likely to be stopped and searched in Brighton.

The police can do plenty. As seen from this thread, though, the plenty that they can do includes violating children who are just as innocent in the eyes of the Law at that point as anybody else.

Thanks for going into the detail.

I've just started to look at the Children's Commissioner's report on strip searches. It covers England and Wales for the period 2018 to mid-2022. A total of 2,847 strip searches of children (aged 8 to 17) were conducted, with 51% leading to no further action. Black children accounted for 38% of all such searches (6x the proportion with respect to national population figures), with boys making up 95% of those searched.

https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/resource/strip-search-of-children-in-england-and-wales/

The (presumed) 49% that did lead to further action is a much higher success rate than I would have anticipated. I haven't reached anything in the report yet about comparison with other (non-strip) searches.

Now this is why I can't 100% condemn Diane Abbot. Of course she expressed herself appallingly, but things like this happen. People who are visibly "other" have a different experience to people who aren't and it needs to be talked about

If you are not wanting the police to perform any of these searches on school pupils - what does the school do if they have information that a particular pupil is dealing drugs in the school. They have also observed that pupil dealing to other pupils.

Police get called and say "...well there is nothing we can do as we are not allowed to search..."

You can't arrest them as they are not in possession of anything - you need to find the items first before you can arrest them and you can only do that by searching them.

What are they supposed to do - invite the police to come in and forcibly peer up the vagina of a girl who might have a smell of weed on her from home or a pencil sharpener in her socks because she cuts when overwhelmed?

All it does is add a threat of their bodies being forcibly violated. Which should never be used as a tool of forcing compliance.

Like I said earlier, unless they're waving around a weapon with intent or carrying a bin bag of weed, a vague feeling isn't enough to warrant betraying children like that.

Except it’s silenced when it is talked about as Diane Abbot is testimony to.

NeverDropYourMooncup · Today 16:21

I'm not saying its a vague feeling - they have witnessed the pupil dealing, they have been told by other pupils that they are dealing. Perhaps the pupils have told staff where the subject pupil hides the drugs on their body or clothing.

The school have a duty of care for the other children and to ensure that they are not taking drugs or effected by others taking drugs on site. Police have a duty of care for the children in the school and that subject pupil - they also have to uphold the law. The parents of the other pupils have an expectation that drug dealing in school will not be tolerated by the school and positive action taken to stop it.

If nothing is done, the subject pupil will just carry on dealing, will deal more harder drugs for more money and potentially cause loads of other people to become hooked or overdose on what they are selling.

But your suggesting that at the risk of upsetting the child the police & school should just ignore it and turn a blind eye and hope for the best.

Why did they include 18 year olds in this research? 18 year olds are adults and if most of the strip searches were of 18 year olds then that completely changes things. People say that black girls are treated older than they are (and I'm not disputing that at all) but if they are 18 then they're not legally children. Have 18 year olds been included if they are still at school? Have 18 year olds been included to deliberately skew the figures? Who knows what the reason is from this research.

Also it's interesting how different ways of stating the same thing can make it sound very different - '75% of searches weren't taken further' sounds like they're a complete waste of time and awful, but '1 in 4 searches were taken further' sounds very reasonable and like it's a success - so which interpretation is correct? How does this success rate compare to other approaches?

There's no mention of what percentage of searches of white girls are/are not taken further (which in research like this is frankly bizarre IMO) - how can you make any real comparisons with only half the data? What alternatives are there to strip searches? How much of a necessity are they - is the criminal activity/exploitation they uncover 'worth' the impact it has on these children? To me if the answer is 'we suspect they have a bit off weed' then it's a resounding no. However if it's 'we're afraid that they're carrying cocaine internally that could kill them and knowing for sure will help bring down an enormous gang involved in county lines all over the country' then that's different.

Maybe the actual research paper is better than this article suggests, but it's frustrating to me when research on topics such as this isn't done really, really well because it's so bloody important - especially after we know the absolutely horrendous way Child Q was treated.

All good points, Choconut. The Children's Commissioner only included young people up to age 17. Liberty Investigates and The Guardian should have done the same to make their data comparable.

Its a difficult read. I really feel for those girls. I had a medical exam at that age which was needed and i consented to. it still left me very distressed. I cant really imagine the level of violation they must feel when so many had no further action.

@Choconut
"Maybe the actual research paper is better than this article suggests"

I dug out the actual article by the organization (Guardian didn't bother to link) and pretty much hit a wall at that point. There's no actual research paper I could find, no methodology, no review or raw data. This is one of those studies done in order to produce a headline and so that people arguing online can link to it and say "see, racism." To which end its done its job and will secure future funding for the organization to produce more such articles.

@TheBiologyStupid Excellent post. Good to get additional figures from a more verifiable source. So boys make up 95% of strip searches? I guess that headline wasn't as catchy for the Guardian and of less interest to "Liberty International". Do we think that girls are less likely to be exploited for drug dealing than boys? Because if we don't then that figure suggests a significant unwillingness to perform strip searches on girls than on boys, rather than the opposite which is what the article goes out of its way to suggest.

I think a lot of young people who are in some way disenfranchised from society & school fall into drug dealing or drug couriering. Whether this is by exploitation or whether it is the young person making that choice is another discussion.

They may feel that they will not make it in academic life and may have no real support at home, so they become anti-social. Being involved in drugs is a way that they can earn some kind of respect & reputation from their peers.

As boys tend to do less well at school than girls, then you would expect more boys to be involved in drugs and hence subject to these types of searches than girls are.

Yes, definitely.

Added to which the media deliberately misrepresented what she said.

Pretending to be 'colour blind' doesn't protect victims of racism.