Concern at police strip search review findings

Concern at the review into strip searches carried out on young people by the PSNI has been expressed by a member of the Policing Board.

Mark H Durkan MLA (SDLP) revealed the Policing Board's human rights advisor found that police "appeared to ignore the rules" in the vast majority of searches.

Mr Durkan said: "It is of the deepest concern that the PSNI appeared to ignore the rules, that appropriate adults were not present during searches and that there are questions of lawfulness in relation to police conduct. 

PSNI ‘appeared to ignore rules’ in strip searches of children, review finds

"I acknowledge that a balance must be struck in terms of cases whereby a young person was at risk of self-harm, but further information is needed on what prior risk assessments were carried out and why officers felt that circumstances were so urgent that they could not wait for an appropriate adult. Again, it must be stressed that these searches should only be conducted as an absolute last resort.  

"After years of work to create a human rights based approach to policing, these findings make for hard reading. I acknowledge that the PSNI accept that there is still work to do, and this should mean full agreement to the recommendations and their implementation without delay.  

"As with other reports by the human rights advisor, this demonstrates the value of the work of the Policing Board, the outworking of its accountability role and its particular work in embedding human rights in the practice of policing.”