The neglected realities of child stop and search - StopWatch
“Not a day goes by in England and Wales when a police officer hasn’t had their hands in a child’s pockets. Yet, there is no law to stop them doing this.
The problems with stop and search among adults are already well documented, not least by us at StopWatch. The police claim that it is a vital tool in halting youth violence and county lines drugs activity, yet between two thirds and three quarters of all annual stops find nothing on the person searched. A report published by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) investigating the use of stop and search powers found that the majority of searches are self-generated (55%). Racial disproportionality has persisted for decades, especially among Black people who were stopped 7 times more often than White individuals in 2021. ‘And yet most forces still can’t adequately explain why there is disproportionality in the way the powers are used’. [1]
However, we neglect the fact that a significant proportion of searches involve children all too often. In the year ending March 2021, 17% of all stop and searches where the age of the person searched was provided were of persons under 18 (115,633 out of 678,389).
Children accounted for almost half (46%) of criminal damage searches, 3 in 10 (29%) offensive weapons searches, a fifth (20%) of section 60 CJPOA searches, and 13% of drugs searches. But only 8% of those searches resulted in arrests (9,753). [2]
This rate of failure took on a new significance during the pandemic, when the volume of stops conducted became too obvious to ignore. The headlines told of forces such as the Met ramping up the number of stops to the point that they searched the equivalent of ‘30% of all young Black males in London’ during the spring of 2020, the time of the first UK lockdown. [3] And a sizeable proportion of those stops (13,805) were of individuals under 18 years of age, of which the majority (8,564) were of Black, Asian and other minority ethnicities.
A Lords report acknowledged that Black, Asian and minority ethnic people’s health suffered disproportionately due to health inequalities and unequal access to services,[4] as did a comprehensive study by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), which revealed that disadvantaged and BAME children had ‘gone backwards’ compared with their better-off peers since March. [5]
So it was galling to see the racial disproportionalities in police stops endure in the face of a global pandemic. Worse still, the data showed that no further action was taken by the police for roughly 85% of stops conducted.
But quite apart from the obvious fact that molesting children on the hunch that they might be a drugs mule or carrying a weapon has had no proven impact on either county lines or youth violence, if the UK can lay any claim to being the bastion of children’s freedoms and liberties, then any sensible government would immediately take steps to protect them from all forms of violence, abuse, and neglect from unrelated adults in public, on human rights grounds alone. [6]
This means that:
police ought to be held to higher standards in order to stop and search children
we should require officers to report searches on minors to their child protection officers
an independent observer or an adult of choice should monitor searches of children aged 14 years old or younger [7]
we should prohibit the use of TASERs and spit-hoods on children aged 14 years old or younger, as per UNICEF’s recommendation [8]
Until this happens, we will forever find it hard to see child stops (such as that caught on social media) as anything other than instances of harassment and intimidation. It simply would not be tolerated in any other profession. Let’s end it now.”
Sources:
[1] HMICFRS
[2] Police powers and procedures: Stop and search and arrests, England and Wales, year ending 31 March 2021 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
[3] Met carried out 22,000 searches on young black men during lockdown | Stop and search | The Guardian
[4] Lockdown hit children, disabled and BAME people - Lords committee - UK Parliament
[5] Gap between rich and poor pupils in England 'grows by 46% in a year' | Schools | The Guardian
[6] UNCRC_summary-1_1.pdf (unicef.org.uk)
[7] UN submission: The policing of children in England and Wales and international human rights standards - StopWatch (stop-watch.org)
[8] UNICEF calls for ban on tasers and spit-hoods on children – The Justice Gap
This blog accompanies a series of policy briefings produced by the AYJ as part of the UKRI-funded Impact of COVID-19 on Youth Justice project, delivered in partnership between the AYJ and the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.
AYJ would like to thank Habib Kadiri, Policy and Research Manager at StopWatch, and the rest of the StopWatch team for their valuable contribution. Find out more about StopWatch:
Website: stop-watch.org
Twitter: @StopWatchUK