Three years after the Child Q incident, officers are still targeting and strip-searching Black schoolchildren. Here’s how we can stop this
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.
