Police Strip Searches

5 live Investigates reveals startling new figures on the number of strip searches carried out by police. The Metropolitan Police alone carried out more than 76 thousand strip searches in the last three years - that's one every 20 minutes. Among them were 4,000 children.The programme has uncovered cases across England and Wales where searches appear unjustified, rules for children haven't been followed and even apparently racially motivated searches. The Home Office is now looking at whether extra safeguards are needed because it says many police forces don't have sufficient records to show if they're being carried out fairly or adequately supervised. Yvette Cooper MP, chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, says the figures are worrying and police need to demonstrate whether so many searches are justified. Only 13 of the 45 forces in the UK we contacted could tell us how many strip searches they'd carried out.