Draft laws still allow Tassie children to be strip- searched

Government must end the routine strip- searching of children,

ROUTINE strip searches involve forcing children as young as 10 to remove their clothes in front of adult prison and police officers, over and over again. It’s a traumatising and unjustifiable practice that should be banned in law.

Laws currently being considered by the Tasmanian government would allow the practice of routine stripsearching of kids to continue. If it’s the government’s intention to enact laws that protect kids, rather than cause them more harm, this opportunity to finally get the law right shouldn’t be squandered.

Reform is long overdue. Data revealed that children were subjected to 203 strip searches over a six- month period in 2018 at the Ashley youth prison. No contraband was found.

Then came a string of distressing incidents in 2019, where a 13- year- old Aboriginal girl was strip- searched for allegedly breaking a curfew, and an 11- year- old boy was strip searched and locked in a cell after being fake- arrested by an off- duty police officer.

This triggered a review of the relevant laws by the Tasmanian Commissioner of Children and Young People.

The Commissioner recommended that the practice of routine strip searching of children in prison should “cease”, and that laws authorising searches reflect human rights standards. The Commissioner also recommended consolidating all of the different strip search powers — by prison guards and police officers in prisons and in police watch houses — in a single point of reference.

While the draft laws do the latter, and will combine all of the strip- search powers in one place, they miss the mark when it comes to the core of what the Commissioner was talking about — that best practice laws should be enacted to protect kids from the harm of being forced to take all of their clothes off in front of intimidating adults in uniforms.

The draft laws could still allow for children to be stripped of their dignity, by being regularly and routinely subjected to strip searches. They allow for strip searches in a wide array of circumstances, and leave the decision making as to what is the least invasive kind of search ( whether it’s a scanner or wand like the ones used at airports, or a full strip search) to the police or prison officer performing the search, instead of clearly stating that a strip search should always be used as a last resort.

Routine strip searches are dehumanising and unnecessary. They compound the trauma experienced by many children — especially girls — entangled in the web of the criminal legal system. This is especially the case when evidence from Australia and around the world shows that strip- searches do not have

a deterrent effect, and that reducing strip- searches does not increase the amount of contraband entering prisons.

In its response to the advice provided by the Commissioner of Children and Young People, the Tasmanian government indicated a strong preference for responding to issues like routine strip searching by way of policies and procedures that sit beneath the proposed laws. This is not good enough. Policies and procedures are not enforceable in the same way that laws are.

Abuse thrives behind bars, as we saw in the Northern Territory’s Don Dale youth prison. The Royal Commission into the abuses at that prison found that protections contained in policies and procedures can be subject to interpretation and can often be ambiguous. That’s why the Royal Commission recommended changes to the laws to better protect children. While the Tasmanian government has reported a short- term decline in the rate at which children are being strip- searched, in circumstances where subjecting one child to an unnecessary strip search can scar them for life, laws need to be enacted to set clear standards and remove all uncertainty in order to change practice long term.

There is no reason the Tasmanian government cannot enact best practice laws that set out adequate protections.

The Northern Territory did so following the Royal Commission, and the ACT also has robust protections built into their laws.

So long as Tasmania does not prohibit routine strip searching in law, children remain at risk of being subjected to regular and routine strip searches.

This is unacceptable, because no matter what a child has done to bring them into contact with the criminal legal system, they do not deserve to be denied their dignity and forced to endure such a harmful and degrading practice.