Redfern Legal Centre (RLC) released new figures on October 17 revealing how many children have been strip searched by NSW Police.
Using freedom of information laws, it found that, over 2 years to last June, 107 people aged from 10 to 17 years old, including 3 girls aged 12 and 6 girls aged 13 had been subjected to a strip search.
The number of girls who have been made to completely disrobe in front of two armed adults over the last 12 months has risen by 30%.
A day later NSW Premier Chris Minns defended the controversial NSW Police strip search protocols, arguing that other states do the same.
Meanwhile, Tara Moriarty, NSW’s agriculture minister speaking on behalf of the NSW Police Minister, told the Legislative Council last week that Yasmin Catley “is planning to meet with key stakeholders in the coming weeks to probe whether the policy settings in place are fit for purpose”.
Catley’s pledge to investigate NSW police use of strip searches was delivered during a debate over whether “subjecting children to strip searches is harmful”.
Labor MP Cameron Murphy spoke in the debate saying the current system was “broken”.
The truth is three-quarters of all strip searches do not result in any convictions for illegal drugs. The circumstances that could warrant 12-year-olds having to disrobe immediately are obscure and it is difficult to see why police are subjecting kids to a practice said to be akin to sexual assault.
archive link: https://archive.ph/qItg6
According to the article, 25% lead to convictions. I don’t know if there’s an appropriate quantity of strip searches greater than zero, but if it’s going to happen, this actually seems like a pretty good result.
I guess the questions to ask here are: could these arrests be made without a strip search (e.g. would a frisk have been sufficient)? If not, could the strip searches be done by an adult of the same gender and also in the presence of their parent or guardian?
There’s definitely a lot that is bad about this, but if 25% of strip searches result in conviction, there’s clearly another problem here that needs to be addressed.
Unless I misunderstand it, they’re saying 25% of all strip searches lead to convictions, but I’m curious what percentage of the strip searches conducted on children specifically do. I can’t imagine it’s 25%.
And your point is a good one - how many of those required the strip search?
And of those that did “need” a strip search for the conviction, how many needed it to be done immediately without appropriate guardian presence and same sex officers.
It seems like there are lots of steps that could minimize risk and invasiveness and that there is questionable benefit in the first instance. Absolutely grotesque.