Strip search on black children

Institutional Racism, Sexual Violence and Blackness

Bibliographic Data

ID2995302
AuthorsY Ibrahim (0000-0002-2510-6683, Queen Mary University of London, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume31
Issue6
Pages1-16
Publication date2025-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Identities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1350-4630 • E-ISSN: 1363-0296
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13504630.2025.2524177
OpenAlexW4411852834
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited55

In 2023, Liberty Investigates (LI) released a report which reveals that Black girls are three times more likely to be subjected to the most invasive strip search with Black people making up nearly half of all Metropolitan Police (Met) strip searches of female children and teenagers. In the UK, the Met faces long-standing accusations of institutional racism. The recent report re-invokes the plight of Blackness, particularly the underage fungible subjecthood of Black girls and their plight within the institutional culture of the Met. This paper, delving critically into the LI report and the unfortunate Child Q incident, reviews the bodies of Black female children and teenagers as sites of unmitigated transgression, disciplining and violence symbolising the ‘spirit-murder’ of the child’s psyche and its relationality to Afropessimism

Criminology · Racism · Sexual violence · Sociology · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · Homelessness and Social Issues · Migration, Refugees, and Integration