This a guest post by Dr Miranda Bevan, King’s College London, who provides the secretariat to the APPG.
Children and young people have told an Inquiry conducted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Children in Police Custody (APPG) that being detained in a police cell can be a highly traumatic experience, magnifying their vulnerabilities and alienating them, and their families, from available support. Yet, in the year to March 2024 there were approximately 62,000 detentions of children (10-17 year olds) in England and Wales, the equivalent of 170 child detentions every single day.
The purpose of police custody is not to punish but to obtain reliable evidence in relation to a suspected offence. Yet research indicates that many children make no comment in police interview and no further action is taken following the majority of child detentions. The process is revealed frequently to be thoroughly counter-productive.
The young witnesses to the Inquiry also spoke about being strip searched – an experience which they described as ‘horrific’ and ‘dehumanising’, even where officers were acting respectfully in conducting the search. Some children and young people described being strip searched repeatedly, an experience which made them want to run from the police, serving only to make a further strip search more likely. Repeated strip search is not uncommon. In the year to March 2024, 200 children were strip searched in police custody more than once, 67 further children were strip searched 3 or more times, including 19 children who were strip searched 5 or more times. However the available data is incomplete, and does not reveal important information such as the level of clothing removed and whether an appropriate adult was present or not.
Whilst the evidence to the Inquiry suggested that the vast majority of officers do their best to mitigate the impact of strip search, some accounts provided by young witnesses included complaints of belittling and racist behaviour by searching officers. Unsurprisingly, such behaviour made the experience particularly distressing and further undermined children’s trust in the police.
On 2nd July 2025 the APPG launched two reports arising from the Inquiry: ‘Making Children’s rights a reality in police custody’ and ‘Hearing young voices on strip search’. The reports draw on five live evidence sessions and more than 100 written and online evidence submissions, from children and young people, police officers, practitioners, volunteers and experts in the field, as well as wider engagement work with stakeholders. Working with good practice examples from police forces, each report makes five recommendations for change.
In ‘Making Children’s rights a reality in police custody’ the APPG’s recommendations include:
- A restriction on the use of police custody for children to arrests for indictable offences and a presumption against detention save in exceptional circumstances, such as where a child is arrested for a serious violent or sexual offence or where the child presents a risk of serious harm to others;
- Halving the time that a child can be detained in police custody by limiting the initial detention period for children to 12 hours (with the power to extend to 24 hours only with senior officer authorisation); and,
- Provision of legal advice to every child in police custody, and the piloting of mandatory child specialist training for legal representatives attending children in the police station.
In ‘Hearing Young Voices on Strip Search’ the APPG’s recommendations include:
- A presumption against strip search which exposes a child’s ‘intimate parts’, save in exceptional circumstances, such as where it is necessary and proportionate to avoid serious harm and where less intrusive alternatives have been exhausted.
- Better and accessible information for children and their families about strip search, for use not just at the time of search, but in the wider community, including in PSHE and Citizenship teaching in schools; and,
- Investment in technological alternatives to strip search, such as scanning devices commonly used in airports.
You can read more about the Inquiry and access the full reports and executive summaries at appgchildrenincustody.org
