Almost half of children that were strip-searched in London between 2022-2023 may not have been supervised by an Appropriate Adult, data from the Children’s Commissioner has revealed.
The role of an “Appropriate Adult” is to protect children who are under police investigation for a criminal offence, yet between July 2022 and June 2023, an Appropriate Adult could not be confirmed as present in 45% of all MTIPS (More Thorough Searches: Intimate Parts Exposed) of Under-18s across England, up one percentile since 2020).
The most recent data that can be obtained at present is for the year 2020, and shows that of all 296 recorded cases of Under-18 MTIPS, inclusive of gender and ethnicity, a staggering 43.7% did not have a confirmed Appropriate Adult present at the time of the strip-search.
Children’s Commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza said at the time: “I am particularly reassured by the progress in London by the Metropolitan Police, but today’s research serves as a stark reminder that this is not an isolated issue in the capital.
“A much higher threshold should be met before a child is subjected to a humiliating and traumatizing search that exposes intimate parts.”
The Children’s Commissioner report revealed in August 2024 that a child is strip-searched in England every 14 hours, and that almost half of searches result in no further action.
The published report by the Children’s Commissioner raised media attention in the wake of the Child Q case, where a Black schoolgirl was strip-searched on school grounds by the Metropolitan Police in 2020, without an Appropriate Adult present.
Justifying the strip-search of a child should always be made on the principle of proportionality, according to City & Hackney’s CHSCP Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review: Child Q, in March 2022. This sets out that a child should only be strip-searched if the level of threat is proportional.
Child Q and her family maintain that this was a racially-motivated decision to conduct a strip-search, and that this constitutes a racist incident.
Psychologist Melernie Meheux worked on the British Psychological Society’s response to the Child Q case, and wants there to be increased consideration for the trauma and stress that a child can experience during and after a strip-search, which severely damages their sense of safety.
Meheux said: “It’s an intrusion into personal space and the sorts of things that we typically teach children about, which is about keeping themselves safe and that adults will be respectful and there is consent and choice.
“When it comes to strip-searching, we take that away, because what we’re essentially saying is that there is someone with authority who will search your intimate areas, and you don’t have consent.”
Safeguarding protocols state that there must always be an Appropriate Adult present, with the extreme exception that an officer reasonably believes there is risk of serious harm, so a search must happen immediately, without time to secure supervision.
There is also a difference in the number of Appropriate Adults present for white children compared to POC children.
Between 2018-2020, POC children accounted for 4x more strip-searches than their white counterparts, and a larger proportion of POC children did not have an Appropriate Adult present: approximately 25% of white children did not have adult supervision, compared to the 31.5% of POC children who were not appropriately supervised.
The differences in outcomes for these searches when filtered by ethnicity are notable, as white children are most likely to have theirs result in a “No Further Action” decision, while POC children are most likely to have their strip-searches end in arrest, based on this data.
As the data above shows, for POC children with no Appropriate Adult present, the margin for the “04 Arrested” outcome was much wider when compared to their white peers who did not have adult supervision.
The prerogative for intersectionality when dissecting this data has been echoed by Amnesty International UK.
Director for Racial Justice at Amnesty International UK Ilyas Nagdee said: “While there’s been a drop in the overall number of strip-searches, the disproportionate use of strip-searches against Black children exposes yet again deep-rooted institutional racism within policing.
“The appalling use of strip-searches against children must stop once and for all as recommended by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in their Concluding Observation of the UK last year.”
In the South East London boroughs of Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham, the picture of safeguarding in strip-searches of children is more promising, as 100% of searches were supervised by an Appropriate Adult between October 2022 and March 2025.
There have been 15 strip-searches of children in the area within this time frame, 12 of which took place in Greenwich.
All 15 searches within South East London were undertaken on male children, 11 of whom were Black boys, while 3 were Asian and 1 was White, meaning that 93.3% of MTIPS searches in the area were of POC children.
When compared to the rest of London, the South East and Central North have been the most stringent with ensuring the presence of Appropriate Adults, whereas North East London has the lowest proportion of adult supervisors present.
While South East London has been most consistent with safeguarding its children during strip-searches, many feel there is still more work to be done.
The Children’s Commissioner has called for a higher threshold to justify the searches, while Amnesty International UK requests that strip-searches of children be stopped altogether.
The British Psychological Society urges that every case should have an Appropriate Adult present, and that there should be no instance where there is not enough time to secure an Appropriate Adult to supervise a child.
In response to the Child Q case, the Metropolitan Police issued the following response in July 2022: “The Metropolitan Police is progressing at pace work to ensure children subject to intrusive searches are dealt with appropriately and respectfully.
“We recognise the significant impact such searches can have. We have already made changes and continue to work hard to balance the policing need for this type of search with the considerable impact it can have on young people.
“We have ensured our officers and staff have a refreshed understanding of the policy for conducting a ‘further search’, particularly around the requirement for an appropriate adult to be present.”
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