Page 3820 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 27 August 2008
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The explanatory memorandum acknowledges the inevitable humiliation of the strip-search procedure. Body scanner or not, it seems that detainees will be subject to this humiliation frequently. In these circumstances, it is surely reasonable to expect the government to explain why it is seeking to expand the current power for the chief executive to direct ACT Corrective Services officers to strip-search a detainee. The fact that it merely reinstates past practice is not a sufficient argument.
In its response to the Human Rights Commission audit of remand facilities, the government has stated that a strip search of prisoners on a random or targeted basis is an integral part of maintaining appropriate levels of safety and security. Statistics on the effectiveness of drug searching are generally unavailable to the public, but what there is forms no reasonable basis for the ACT to expand this humiliating practice.
Anna Bogdanic, of Monash University, reports that over a four-year period there were 41,728 strip searches at the Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre. This led to only two discoveries of illicit drugs. Over a 27-month period, 35,288 searches at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Victoria produced only 20 items of unspecified contraband. Bogdanic observes that, in spite of that intense effort, the presence of illicit drug use is still significantly high in both Queensland and Victorian women’s prisons.
The recently published national corrections drug strategy concedes as much nationally:
… approximately 60% of offenders report drug use on at least one occasion during their current term of imprisonment. Around 33% of people who inject drugs continue to inject drugs in prison. A smaller percentage of people also begin using drugs and injecting drugs for the first time when in prison.
The burden of proof is surely on the government to convince the Assembly that the power of inevitable humiliation it seeks to expand is justified on the grounds of prudence. Where does the bill specify limitations consistent with respect for human rights and dignity? It does not. Cocooned in our comfortable, middle-class existence, it is almost impossible for ministers and other members to empathise with and appreciate the extreme distress and humiliation that such practices impose on people whose self-esteem is already often at an extremely low ebb.
The prison health plan tells us that the human beings that the legislation will declare it prudent to strip-search are likely to be in very poor mental health. Prisoners are more likely than the general population to have a psychotic illness, major depression or personality disorder. Indeed, if New South Wales is anything to go by—and currently our prisoners are part of their group of prisoners—the incidence of mental illness will be 30 times higher in a prison population than in the general community. Many detainees will have an overlapping substance abuse disorder.
A study by the ACT Community Coalition on Corrections on mental health and the new prison makes the point that providing good health services will not in itself make for a healthy prison that rehabilitates. What is also important is an operational regime devoid as far as possible of the environmental stresses that cause or aggravate mental illness.
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