Page 3821 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 27 August 2008
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Strip searching is bad enough for men, but for women its impacts are extreme. Many experience it as rape, particularly those who have suffered sexual abuse. A Queensland survey revealed:
… a high number of female prisoners report sexual abuse prior to the age of 16 years (37%). An even higher number reported some form of non–consensual sexual activity (42.5%). In a number of cases, the abuse occurred before the age of 10 years (35%). More than a third of these abused women were subject to multiple episodes of attempted or completed intercourse before the age of 10. Among the women who had been sexually abused, the abuse continued in some cases for more than five years …
By contrast in the greater population, 8.8% of Queensland women aged 18 or more report being the victim of rape or sexual assault.
For many women, being strip-searched is similar to a state-sanctioned sexual assault. Some symptoms of being strip-searched include feelings of anger, depression, anxiety and self-blame. Flashbacks and nightmares are not uncommon. Sexual dysfunctions are a common response in victims of rape. Women who are strip-searched often experience the same. For these women the trauma of strip searching induces in them feelings of disgust towards their own bodies. Perhaps it is meant to.
The emotions of women who are raped are often directed inwards and lead to depression and self-harm. For some women, strip searching makes it more likely that they will self-harm or even commit suicide. Most women detainees are not security risks. Are the negative dimensions of routine strip searching in pursuit of a flawed drugs policy worth the costs? These provisions will lead to greater sharing of syringes and greater transmission of blood-borne diseases.
We need to ask if we are meeting our duty of care to these women, who are as much our constituents as the burghers of O’Malley and Red Hill. In my opinion, the answer is no; we are failing them yet again.
A Queensland inquiry found that a significant number of women elected not to have contact visits from family and friends, mainly because they knew that they would have to be strip-searched afterwards. Not surprisingly, families and friends think twice about visiting detainees, and are traumatised when they realise the consequences for the person they visit. It makes a bit of a mockery of the government’s claim that prisoners will have greater accessibility to and interaction with family and other supports to assist in their rehabilitation and to maintain family unity.
What we are possibly witnessing is the government retreating from its commitment to a human rights compliant prison before it has even opened. I invite the government to prove me wrong; I want to be proved wrong. But the signs are not encouraging that it recognises that a break needs to be made from existing failed corrections practices if its vision of a rehabilitative corrections environment is to be realised.
Perhaps the crowning irony of strip searching is that it is intended to protect detainees from drugs yet it is likely to deepen their drug problems. As Bogdanic points out:
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