There has been a huge rise in the use of strip searches by police over the past decade, according to the University of NSW report released on Thursday.
The Rethinking Strip Searches by NSW Police report notes the “degrading and humiliating” searches aren’t legally justified if a police officer merely suspects someone has drugs.
Yet this is the reason given for more than 90 per cent of the strip searches conducted in NSW in the year ending June 2019.
“The strip search means being stripped by total strangers, often forced to contort into unusual positions – to bend over to squat and cough – and so on, in circumstances and conditions which are almost inevitably going to be humiliating and intimidating,” report co-author Dr Michael Grewcock said at the report launch on Thursday.
“If they were being conducted in any other circumstances, if you take sensitive police powers out of the question, it would be … quite a serious assault.”
Dr Grewcock says there are also major concerns about the use of strip searches in indigenous communities.
Ten per cent of people strip-searched by police in NSW over the past three years were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders.
“We’re getting stories of Aboriginal children being stripped outside of supermarkets and stripped at the school gates,” Dr Grewcock said.
The report has called for legislative change to make clear when police can conduct a strip search.
Solicitor Samantha Lee from the Redfern Legal Centre – which commissioned the report – says a briefing was provided to the police minister last week.
Read the full article here (The Canberra Times, 22 August 2019)
