The government data, which was obtained by the Redfern Legal Centre through the Freedom of Information Act (1982) and seen by PEDESTRIAN.TV, reveals that 3750 people were strip-searched by police over a 12 month period.
Of those, 473 people identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, with 150 identifying as women. That’s over 12% of NSW Police strip-search targets being Indigenous, despite these groups only making up 2.9% of the NSW population.
In the previous financial year, there were 492 Indigenous people subject to strip-searches.
From the total 3750 people who were strip-searched, 96 were under the age of 18, including an 11-year-old Indigenous child. Just over half of the 3750 people (54%) were found ‘without items’, a.k.a. illegal drugs or weapons.
“Police have failed and continue to fail when a strip search occurs,” said Redfern Legal Centre’s Police Accountability Practice solicitor Samantha Lee told NITV news.
“Police are targeting vulnerable people, and it is very unjust.”
Slater and Gordon have teamed up with the Redfern Legal Centre to prepare a class action in NSW that looks to compensate those who have been unfairly strip-searched by NSW Police.
Read the full story here. (Pedestrian TV, 2 November 2020)
RLC in the Media: An 11-Year-Old Indigenous Child Was Among 96 Kids Strip-Searched By NSW Police Last Year
Date published
Disturbing new data from NSW Police shows the deeply invasive – and potentially illegal – practice of strip-searching is still disproportionately targeting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, some of which are children as young as 11.
Michael Di Iorio writes for Pedestrian TV.
