The revelation has spurred new criticism of the controversial tactic frequently used to hunt for drugs at places like music festivals.
The NSW police minister, David Elliott, acknowledged that officers had not always abided by standard procedures in conducting strip searches of children, which can be conducted only if the circumstances are urgent and a parent or guardian is present.
But he said that if drugs were uncovered in the process, parents would nonetheless be happy. “I’ve got young children, and If I thought that the police felt that they were at risk of doing something wrong, I’d want them strip-searched,” he said.
Civil liberties advocates strenuously disagreed. They called the searches an invasive overstep of paternalistic police powers that leave psychological trauma. They also said laws allowing the tactic reflected a zero-tolerance drug policy that is doing more harm than good.
“It’s the only form of legislation that allows an adult to tell a young child to take off all their clothes,” said Samantha Lee, head of the Police Accountability Practice at Redfern Legal Centre, which obtained the data through a freedom of information request. “If it was any other circumstance, the law would come down hard and heavy.”
From mid-2016 to mid-2019, 122 girls under the age of 18 were strip-searched in the field in NSW. Among them were two 12-year-olds and eight 13-year-olds.
While strip searches occur in most of Australia, festivals in New South Wales have become infamous for them, with police officers often patrolling with drug detection dogs. But critics have said that such searches should not be routinely conducted for the relatively minor offence of drugs possession.
Ms Lee has called for changes to legislation that would specify under which circumstances strip searches could occur and require court order for children to be searched.
“The problem has been left to fester for many years,” she said. “It’s time the police force caught up.”
Read the full article here (The New York Times, 6 November 2019)
