The inconvenient truth behind the strip-searching of children by police
It's easy to be outraged by the headlines - but if you care about children and young people then you should support good cops to use their powers professionally and lawfully.
For many, the very idea of strip-searching a child will sound simultaneously inhumane and entirely unnecessary. On the face of it, it may seem like the sort of thing that only a paedophile would undertake. Throw in a dose of racial disparity in the statistics on use, and it seems like only a racist paedophile would dare to strip-search a child.
The headlines seen over the weekend and into today, following both the Casey Review and the Children’s Commissioner’s report, only tell half a story. Undoubtedly, being strip-searched is an unpleasant and upsetting experience, and the police must use their powers professionally and lawfully.
However, we must not pretend away or overlook the grim reality that these powers are in part needed because children are all too often being forced or coerced into concealing dangerous drugs on and around their bodies by vile individuals selfishly seeking to profit from peddling misery in each of our towns and cities.
The truth in modern Britain is that drug dealers and traffickers - and their mules and associates - routinely conceal and smuggle drugs in their underpants, up their anuses, in their vaginas, in their bras, and even in their foreskins. Some will even hide them in their own baby’s nappies.
Drug addicts often will do the same - particularly if they are about to go to prison, and are either desperate to have a fix ready to go, or else make a few quid for themselves or others by selling what they manage to smuggle inside.
Individuals with mental health issues are also prone to conceal dangerous items about their person - sometimes in the most intimate of places. It is not unheard of for individuals to smuggle razor blades or other dangerous items around with a view to being able to engage in self-harm or acts of violence, even while in the custody of the state.
Imagine then, being the police officer or prison officer, who is professionally responsible for such an individual. You have a duty to protect that individual from harm while they are in your custody. Imagine you’ve seen the individual conceal a razor blade, wraps of drugs, or even a mobile phone, in their pants. Perhaps you’ve even seen them appear to ‘plug it’ up their anus. Perhaps the individual has even bragged and boasted about what they have on them.
In such circumstances, do we want our police and prison officers to intervene - or to let it slide? If it was your loved one being forced to carry crack and heroin up their anus, or choosing to carry a razor blade to cut themselves, do you want the police or prison officer to leave them to it, or to intervene?
The answer should be obvious.
The even more sobering truth is that the smarter and more senior criminals - by which I mean those who get others to do the more dangerous work - find that using children as part of their criminal business model makes good business sense.
Why handle the drugs yourself, when you can either encourage or force someone other than yourself to do it?
The younger the better. Far easier to intimidate a 12-year old, than a 22-year old. Far easier to incentivise a child: a twenty-pound note is worth far more to a 12-year old than a 22-year old. The same logic holds - even where the exploiter is a child themselves, such as the 16 or 17-year old exploiting a younger child.
Children are easier to manipulate, exploit, and threaten. But they also present a better business opportunity for the criminal enterprise.
Over the last decade, it is undoubtedly the case that police have become much more willing to discount certain actions in response to a suspect being under-18. It has been reported that some police forces even claim to have a policy of not detaining children, and we have also seen a massive fall in the number of under-18s held in secure custody. The odds of being locked up are much lower for children than adults, and those odds have been falling for more than a decade.
So, even if an under-18 is caught with dozens of wraps of cocaine and heroin in their underpants, or up their rectum, then they will likely be back out and on the street to continue trafficking and dealing the same day or the very next day.
For the dealer or trafficker running an operation, this minimises disruption to their business, and also gives them further leverage over the child, who will often find themselves further ‘indebted’ to their ‘master’ - and they will be expected to pay their master back for the drugs and profits that have been lost.
So, while it is quite right and proper that we expect the police to use their powers professionally and lawfully, it should also be clear that banning or restricting the use of police powers “against children” in fact only serves to increase the attractiveness of children for criminal exploitation.
Finally, “strip-searching” is something of a loaded term. Many will imagine a brutalist scene reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption - with officers shouting and screaming for the detained person to strip naked and then be subjected to open ridicule, manhandling, or worse.
It might better be thought of and described as a more thorough search involving the exposure of intimate body parts. In an era dominated by clickbait, it’s an uphill battle to sell a more wordy term - but that only makes it all the more important that the process is properly understood and the reasons for it explained.
It has long been clear that such searches should be conducted in a manner such that the individual being searched only ever has half of their body exposed. For example, individuals would be asked to remove the top half first. Then, they would put back on their top half of clothing, before moving on to removing the bottom half. Thus, the detained person is never wholly naked.
Likewise, it has long been clear that the search itself should generally not involve any bodily contact between the searching officer and the detained person - though of course a police officer remains empowered to act in certain circumstances, such as self-defence or the defence of the individual being searched. Similarly, there are occasions where searches must be conducted with an unco-operative detained person.
For the avoidance of doubt, strip searches don’t involve police officers physically fishing around inside body cavities looking for drugs. It’s about what officers can see and where items are seen to be concealed internally (e.g. a condom or kinder egg protruding from an anus or vagina), it is for medical professionals to remove them.
However upsetting or distressing any individual strip search may be, we should also recognise that far more upsetting or distressing is the daily experience of countless children across the country being forced to plug drugs in their most intimate body parts, often with the very real and credible threat of serious violence if they refuse.
From my own experience of conducting or being present during searches, they can often involve some awkwardness, but, for the most part, they are conducted with a very clear and strong desire and determination on the part of the police officers to conduct them professionally and with respect for the dignity of all involved.
There are safeguards in law and they should be followed. Nothing in this post should be construed as dismissing or undermining the importance of such safeguards, or the importance of ensuring they are followed.
No matter how professionally such a search is conducted, there is of course a fundamental reality: exposing one’s genitalia and the area between the bum cheeks is, almost by definition, an unpleasant and uncomfortable experience.
Nor does it help that the guidance around the conduct of the procedure has changed a number of times - often without any substantial explanation being conveyed to the frontline.
If I recall correctly, at one point, the approach was to ask the individual to squat and cough - more recently, it was to request the individual to bend over and spread their own bum cheeks. I can’t attest to what may be the latest advice or requirement.
Furthermore, from some specific cases that have been subject to complaint and scrutiny, it would appear that officers have either had very little or very poor training in conducting the procedure itself. This puts officers at considerable risk, and puts the detained person in jeopardy. It also risks undermining an otherwise vital power.
A Freedom of Information Act request made to the Metropolitan Police in May 2022, was less than clear in its answers to some simple and not unreasonable questions - and may very well have left the requester not much wiser about how such searches can and should be conducted.
The conduct of an effective search is the sort of thing that a professional body for policing (like the College of Policing) might, you’d think, have produced a super practical guide for police officers to help get right and for the public and media to inform their understanding - but you’d be sorely disappointed.
To the extent that the focus from Dame Rachel de Souza and Baroness Casey ensures better training and practice, that can only be a good thing.
Beyond ensuring the training is fit for purpose, in these febrile times, one recommendation worth considering would be for the officer who seeks authority or offers the grounds for such a search, to not be the officer who conducts the search.
It would obviously be subject to the availability of officers unconnected with the stop or arrest, and where there is no immediate risk of serious harm. It might help protect officers from malicious or mistaken allegations of sexual intent or misconduct, while also affording the detained person a degree of assurance that such a search was not being conducted by an officer with whom they might already have had or perceived some animus.
A further positive development would be to use technology to detect items concealed - potentially avoiding the need for more intimate searching. Most prisons and airports have the sort of technology that detects concealed contraband. There is no reasonable basis for not properly testing the potential for this technology to be applied in the policing context. It could aid both the fight against crime and the protection of detained persons in the care of the police.
In any case, the unfortunate truth is that so long as humans seek to smuggle and conceal prohibited and dangerous items about - and inside - their person - then we shall need to provide police officers (as well as prison officers, and medical professionals) with the ability to undertake searches that involve the exposure of genitalia and other sensitive body parts.
It is perfectly proper to demand high standards in the conduct of these searches - ensuring they are conducted professionally and lawfully - but, in demanding or seeking fewer such searches, there is a very grave risk that the detained person - whether child or adult - will, along with other children and vulnerable adults, be placed at greater risk of harm and exploitation, rather than less.
Finally, we know that criticising the police is, for some, a full-time professional pursuit, and for others a fashionable and seemingly virtuous part-time hobby. However, doing so unthinkingly, and without appreciating the context, risks serious adverse consequences for the very individuals supposedly being advocated for.
No matter their race or ethnicity, the 15-year old boy or girl in police custody for a criminal offence, and who is known or believed to be in possession of a razor blade and who has stated they intend to use it to self-harm or commit suicide, is not best served by a society averse to police officers using their powers to search and remove the blade.
The 14-year old boy or girl being used as a drug mule forced to smuggle crack and heroin from London to Littlehampton, or Liverpool to Rhyl, is not best served by a society that thinks the police searching them is more harmful than allowing their criminality and exploitation to continue undetected.
The best hope for some (perhaps most?) children involved in county lines or other similar criminality will be interception by the police - coupled with a serious effort to roll up those operating the line or criminal operation, and a serious and credible offer for the child to turn their back on crime that doesn’t just see them cast or pulled back into the criminal fray the very next day.
So, when you next see a big headline about “police strip-searching children” (The Times) or children being “targeted” by police (Daily Mail), don’t rush to judgement or condemnation. Neither the argument nor the children at greatest risk of harm or exploitation are best served by ignoring the wider context.
While some campaigners and activists are undoubtedly well-intentioned, those with the most to gain from further restrictions on the searching of children aren’t the children involved, but the men, women, and children who groom and exploit children into a life of crime as part of their criminal enterprises.
This example from Cambridgeshire illustrates the point:
On 1 October 2020, police received a call reporting two children – a 15-year-old girl and her 16-year-old boyfriend – missing, after they didn’t return to their home in Peterborough that afternoon. Three days later, they were found in Huntingdon by police at what is believed to have been a “trap house”, used to buy, sell and consume drugs from. The children were taken into police protection where the girl disclosed she had class A drugs on her, which she had been given and forced to conceal within her body by a man.
But there are countless other examples from across the country:
Clacton: Drug dealers jailed after young boy is exploited by gang
Rushden drug dealer jailed for using children to supply class A drugs
Police focus on cruel drug dealers who exploit Torbay and South Devon’s children
So, despite the headlines and rhetoric of recent weeks, the inconvenient truth is that the greatest threat to children - whatever their race or ethnicity - doesn’t come from police officers using their powers professionally and lawfully.
We all can and should expect our police to operate professionally and lawfully. But in the quest for the highest standards, let us not forget that the greatest threat still comes from vile criminals who will generally stop at literally nothing in the pursuit of their own entirely selfish criminal ends.
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Disclaimer: I’ve not yet read the report by the Children’s Commissioner. It may make these points, but the absence of these points from the media and wider debate around strip searching so far, has prompted me to offer the above. Any errors and inaccuracies, are entirely my own.
Postscript: If, having given the matter due consideration, you remain unconvinced of the merits or need for such powers - then I hope that you might at least be persuaded that further reducing or restricting the use of the powers comes with consequences. It’s okay for people to disagree - but let us all, at least, hear the arguments and continue to have the debate.