Page 28 - JUSTICE Tackling Racial Injustice - Children and the Youth Justice System

and throughout their lives. The corrosive effect is unsurprising. BAME
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communities should be able to expect a service from the police that is equal to
that experienced by everyone else.

2.16 Unfortunately, the Working Party, in its discussions with children, heard that
when a stop is unsubstantiated, police officers often do not consider an apology
to be necessary. As such the encounter ends with no acknowledgement of the
embarrassment or disruption it has caused.

2.17 It is unsurprising, then, that having experienced repeated stop and search, some
BAME children may be resistant. Rather than the police understanding the
reasons for this resistance, they are often met with police force, including for
example, higher use of hand-cuffs and taser deployment. This in itself could
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generate criminal outcomes for the child, for instance a charge of obstructing
the stop and search, resisting arrest, or assaulting a police officer, alongside a
charge for any illicit article found, rather than a caution.

2.18 Aggressive policing tactics are unfortunately widespread and frequently
deployed against children and those with mental health issues. We are deeply
concerned by the increased use of handcuffs at stops and searches, which has
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risen by 158% over the last three years in Hackney alone. Handcuffing is a
use of force, and should always be proportionate to the threat at hand. It is
unacceptable that such a tool should therefore become regularised. To this
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end, we welcome the MPS’ recently concluded review into the use of
handcuffing, and look forward to its recommendations being implemented in

66 Another child said that “the only interaction that you have with police nowadays is when you are
being pulled over, when you are being stopped and searched,” Home Affairs Select Committee, Serious
youth violence, Sixteenth report of session 2017-2019, (2019).
67 P. Keeling, ‘No Respect: Young BAME men, the police and stop and search’ (Criminal Justice
Alliance, June 2017), p. 3.
68 K. Pimblott, A growing threat to life: taser usage by Greater Manchester Police, (Resistance Lab,
2020). Home Office statistics on use of force also confirm this. See also ‘Police use of force statistics,
England and Wales: April 2019 to March 2020’, p. 21.
69 Account, Policing in Hackney, challenges from youth in 2020, (Hackney CVS, 2020), p. 21.
70 ‘officers should not routinely handcuff people in order to carry out a stop and search. They must judge
each case on its merits in line with conflict management principles and to be able to justify any use of
force, including the use of handcuffs. Any force used should be proportionate to the aim of preventing
crime’ See, ‘Stop and search: Legal application - Most proportionate: detention for the purpose of
search’, College of Policing.

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