PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Body Searches: Children (2 May 2023)

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 17 April 2023 to Question 175703 on Body Searches: Children, how many and what proportion of forces voluntarily provided this data.

Asked by:
Navendu Mishra (Labour)

For the first time in the year ending March 2022, the Home Office collected and published data on strip searches that occurred in police custody, available here: Police powers and procedures: Other PACE powers, England and Wales, year ending 31 March 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The data quality section of the publication includes information on the number of forces which were able to provide data for the year ending March 2022: 28 out of the 43 territorial police forces (65%) provided data on strip searches in custody. Of these, 27 forces provided data on age of the person strip searched.

It is usual practice for new data collections added to the Annual Data Requirement (ADR) to be collected on a voluntary basis for the first year of data collection, to allow forces time to embed recording processes and make changes to their systems as required. As such, not all forces provided data or provided partial data and therefore the data were published as experimental statistics. It is mandatory for police forces to provide this data for the year ending March 2023.

Answered by:
Chris Philp (Conservative)
9 May 2023