Imagine being 15, at school, on your period. Police officers make you remove your clothing. Your mum does not know. No other adult is in the room. They find no drugs. That was Child Q. That was December 2020. A new report from the Children’s Commissioner confirms it was never a one-off.
Recently, Dame Rachel de Souza published her fourth report on strip searches of children by police across England and Wales. The findings are damning. Black children are now almost eight times more likely to face a strip search than white children. A pattern that has survived years of reports, promises and pledges is still very much alive.
What the Report Actually Found
Between January 2018 and June 2024, police carried out almost 3,400 strip searches on children across England and Wales. The youngest child was eight years old. Shockingly, 30 per cent of those searches targeted children who had already been strip-searched before.
The racial disparity is the most alarming part. Black children are almost eight times more likely to be strip-searched than white children, and around five times more likely than Asian children. Officers also used force in nearly one in five stop and searches of children, reaching for handcuffs, firearms and Tasers. Black children were almost five times as likely to have force used against them during a search. When officers justified that force, they more often cited a Black child’s size or build as the reason.
Read that again. A child’s size. As justification for pointing a Taser at them.
The Child Q Case and What Happened Next
Child Q was a Black 15-year-old schoolgirl strip-searched by Metropolitan Police officers at her Hackney school in December 2020. She was menstruating. No appropriate adult was present. Officers did not inform her mother. They found no drugs. An independent report later concluded that racism was a likely factor in the decision to search her.
In June 2025, a disciplinary panel finally dismissed two of the officers for gross misconduct. The panel chair said their actions caused “enormous harm” to Child Q and seriously damaged public trust in policing within Black communities. It took nearly five years to get there. The Children’s Commissioner is now asking why the system that allowed it still exists.
The Numbers That Should Make Everyone Uncomfortable
The Children’s Commissioner’s report found that in 43 per cent of cases where officers used force during a stop and search, they took no further action against the child. Police strip searches of children have fallen by an estimated 56 per cent since 2020. Dame Rachel warns, though, that this decline is “masking” ongoing safeguarding failures rather than fixing them.
StopWatch UK, which monitors police use of stop and search powers, has consistently made the same point: falling numbers do not automatically mean falling injustice. Fewer searches carried out with the same racial bias is still racial bias.
The IOPC claimed after Child Q that “the right safeguards are now in place.” Today’s report disagrees. Black children still face searches at nearly eight times the rate of white children. Safeguards on paper clearly are not delivering fairness on the ground.
Strategic Action Plan: What You Can Do Right Now
This report demands a response. Here is what you can do, whatever your background.
Step one: Read the full Children’s Commissioner report at childrenscommissioner.gov.uk. Share it with your school, youth group or community organisation. That sharing puts direct pressure on police forces to act.
Step two: Know your rights. Release UK breaks down exactly what police can and cannot do during a stop and search. Read it. Save it. Share it.
Step three: Write to your local MP via WriteToThem. Push them to demand mandatory independent oversight of every strip search involving a child.
Step four: Back the organisations doing this work. StopWatch UK and the Children’s Rights Alliance for England are actively campaigning for reform and need public support to keep the pressure on.
Child Q spoke up. Four years of reports followed. Reports alone do not protect children, though. The pressure to change things has to come from everywhere, and that includes young people who know exactly what is at stake.
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