The report, commissioned following the case of Child Q in which a teenage girl was strip-searched at school while on her period, shows that from January 2018 to June 2023, 3,368 strip searches of children were conducted by 44 police forces in England and Wales, including the British Transport Police.
Of these searches, too many were "unnecessary, unsafe and under-reported", Dame Rachel de Souza said.
She added that a much higher threshold should be met before a child is "subjected to a humiliating and traumatising intimate search".
More than 100 searches conducted between 2018 and June 2023 were not compliant with statutory codes of practice and almost 400 searches constituted a safeguarding concern.
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