Children’s commissioner finds wide disparity with white counterparts in year to June 2023, with 88% of searches aimed at finding drugs

Black children are four times more likely to be strip-searched by police officers across England and Wales than their white counterparts, according to the latest nationwide figures disclosed by a watchdog.

The children’s commissioner also found that children under the age of 15 are a bigger proportion of those subjected to intimate searches, official figures from the year to June 2023 showed. Fewer than half of all searches of children in that year (45%) were conducted in the presence of an appropriate adult.

A report released on Monday also found that nearly nine out of every 10 of searches [88%] conducted by England and Wales’s 44 forces were trying to find drugs.

  • cynar@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    If a gang is using children to deal drugs, then it’s an unfortunate, but necessary, thing.

    A while back, gangs realised that the police and courts will go easy on teenagers. Teenagers are also notoriously easy to manipulate. This makes them the perfect cover and scape goats for a gang.

    The real question is why blacks are being targeted. Is it the police being racist, or are the gangs targeting them, and so the police follow?

    • Cadeillac@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      children under the age of 15

      I don’t doubt you, but that is fucking sick on both sides if it is the case. Surely there is a better method than blindly strip searching underage minorities

      Edit: I can almost guarantee racism by the police, and if not, systematic racism put them in the situation to be targeted by the gangs

      • Cadeillac@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Oh yeah. Didn’t you see they just found a bunch of meth hidden in a celery shipment? Strip search the kids!

        /s

    • ashar@infosec.pub
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      2 months ago

      Strangely enough the people who make up largest market for drugs are never stopped and searched because they are rich middle class people.