Page 29 - JUSTICE Tackling Racial Injustice - Children and the Youth Justice System

full. Equally, tasers are disproportionately used against BAME people and
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those experiencing mental health issues. For instance, between 2017/18 and
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2018/19, Manchester saw the largest increase in taser usage, with Black people
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being subject to taser use at four times the rate of their White counterpart.
The figures are similarly concerning with respect to Black children, who
accounted for 54% of taser incidents in 2017-18, as compared to 28% for White
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children. Tasering children is always unacceptable. Moreover, the excessive
use of force can have serious long-term impacts on the mental health of
children, and we do not consider that this is fully understood by police
officers. Compounded with an absence of prosecutions for excessive use of
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force in police custody, there is unsurprisingly an impression that the police
unfairly target BAME children and can act with impunity. We therefore
recommend that the Home Office should launch a review on the use of
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force, and specifically tasers, on BAME people; particularly children
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and those with mental health difficulties.

2.19 In London, stop and search is often carried out by the Metropolitan Police
Service’s (MPS) ‘Territorial Support Group’ (TSG). TSG officers - who are

71 Metropolitan Police ‘Met concludes review to further improve handcuffing processes’ 8 January 2021.
72 See: Home Office, Police Use of Force Statistics, England and Wales: April 2018 to March 2019.

73 K. Pimblott, A growing threat to life: taser usage by Greater Manchester Police, (Resistance Lab,
2020).
74 Child’s Rights Alliance for England and Just for Kids Law, State of Children’s Rights in England
2018: Policing and Criminal Justice, (2019), p. 6.
75 Ibid, p. 22.
76 See CJA response to the Home Affairs Select Committee Inquiry:
“We are also concerned that under Code A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act there is no
requirement for forces or officer to record information about whether handcuffs (or any other use of
force) are used during a stop and search. This information is expected to be recorded separately on a use
of force form. From our understanding, current police systems are not configured in a way which allows
an officer to make a seamless transition from stop and search records to use of force records – making
it difficult to monitor whether the two are being applied in conjunction with one another.” – Criminal
Justice Alliance, ‘Written evidence submitted by the Criminal Justice Alliance’.
77 While we welcome the College of Police and National Police Chief’s Council’s recently
commissioned review of the disproportionate use of tasers in December 2020, we consider that wider
work is needed to understand the way in which force is used more broadly, with greater direction at a
departmental level. See National Police Chief Council, ‘Disproportionality in Police Use of Taser:
Independent Panel Chair Announced’, (17 December 2020).

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