Three years ago, frightful details emerged of the strip-searching of a 15-year-old Black schoolgirl by police officers in Hackney. At the time, I was working in the borough as part of a harm reduction programme, engaging with vulnerable young people in settings ranging from hospitals to pupil referral units.
“Child Q” was wrongfully suspected of carrying cannabis and was intimately searched by police officers at school, without the necessary supervision, while menstruating. Sadly, hers was not an isolated case. A new report by the children’s commissioner shows that Black children in England and Wales were 11 times more likely to be subject to pre-arrest strip-search than their white peers. While politicians such as Keir Starmer deliver sensationalised vignettes about the scent of weed plaguing London and “ruining lives” so as not to appear soft on crime, young Black children endure the lived realities of the degrading and disproportionate policing this discourse promotes.
And even though UK law requires the presence of an appropriate adult during the strip-searching of minors in non-emergency situations, this protocol was observed neither with Child Q, nor in 52% of the 2,847 cases recorded between 2018 and 2022, according to the report. It is increasingly inarguable that police malpractice is some exceptional occurrence.
I grew up and studied in Hackney, and this personal proximity places me among those who would find the Child Q incident particularly harrowing and objectionable. The young people with whom I conduct social justice workshops in classrooms, for example, are largely from Black and ethnically diverse backgrounds, and describe feeling chronically singled out, surveilled and more harshly punished for comparable behaviour to their white peers.
I empathise with them when they relate the fear and frustration they experience being directed through metal detectors between lessons, or summarily excluded from school without the fair opportunity to present their perspectives.
The outcry against stop and search is sustained not only because it is invasive, demeaning and psychologically damaging, but also because it is ultimately ineffective at preventing crime. As in the landmark Hackney case, more than half of the strip-searches of children in the report’s time period led to no further action. That the locations where searches transpired were not recorded in almost half of cases is yet another example of the inconsistency and opacity with which the police routinely operate. It is shameful that children as young as eight are being subjected to these measures in any case, let alone without adequate accountability.
The well-established racial disproportionality in the deployment of police search powers is even more pronounced at lower age brackets. Indeed, the ensuing investigation and safeguarding report regarding Child Q confirmed racism as a likely factor influencing officers’ failure to follow protocol. This all corroborates what is acknowledged within last week’s review of the Metropolitan police spearheaded by Louise Casey: Black people, women and children are especially vulnerable not only to the most serious crimes such as homicide and sexual or racially aggravated assaults, but also to tyrannical policing. The scathing Casey review challenges the adultification of Black children, who are focused on as suspects rather than being regarded as vulnerable and accordingly safeguarded from harm.
Since Black children are significantly more likely to be reported missing, it is especially troubling that avoidable delays in investigations, crucial failings and severe breaches of trust by the Metropolitan police appear to be more likely in cases involving Black complainants.
In mine and many others’ views, in fact, the Metropolitan police itself presents an urgent safeguarding risk to children. This position is hardly controversial, and is continually cemented by the endless succession of disgraced officers, such as PC Hussain Chehab, the Safer Schools officer jailed last week for a series of sexual offences against minors. In light of such repeated scandals, the prospect of more officers being stationed in schools is simply terrifying. In addition to the fact that policing as we know it is mostly reactive instead of preventive, it relies too heavily on brutal physical force that escalates rather than diffuses situations.
Offering students respite and safe spaces for breathing, speaking and grieving as necessary should be our first priority. In my experience, mental health and mentoring services such as Place2Be and PATTERN are better placed than police to deal with the issues most commonly arising in schools. To keep children safe, especially those from diverse ethnic backgrounds, resources should urgently be redirected from policing to grassroots organisations that are actually embedded within communities. These will be most attuned to local needs and equipped with specialist knowledge and experience, lived and professional, to meet them.
Franklyn Addo is a musical artist, writer and community activist from Hackney, east London. His nonfiction debut, A Quick Ting on Grime, is forthcoming
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
