Did you know you live in a society where people are lawfully sexually assaulted at the hands of the state?
We should all be completely outraged by prisons using strip searches, including on children as young as ten, across this country.
I write as someone who has experienced the torturous violence of the prison system, including being sexually abused at the hands of the state.
I am a white settler on Sovereign Aboriginal Land and acknowledge that the violence addressed in this article is inseparable from the ongoing violence of settler colonialism. Prisons and policing have been established and deployed as tools of dispossession and control against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who continue to be grossly overrepresented in prisons and disproportionately strip searched.
The report Ending Strip Searching in Australian Prisons by the Formerly Incarcerated Girls Justice Advocates Melbourne (FIGJAM), Flat Out, and the Human Rights Law Centre, documents the widespread and harmful use of strip searching across Australian prisons. Drawing on lived experience accounts and national prison data, the report argues that strip searching is unnecessary, ineffective and a form of state-perpetrated violence. In Victoria alone, more than 40,000 strip searches were conducted in adult prisons over seven months, despite no evidence of any relationship between strip searching and contraband detection or deterrence.
The report highlights how strip searching disproportionately harms Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, women, trans and gender diverse people, and children, particularly those with histories of trauma and sexual violence.
Research indicates that majority of women entering prison in Victoria have experienced sexual assault and other forms of gender-based violence across their lifetime. Estimates suggest up to 90% of incarcerated women have histories of sexual, physical, or emotional abuse, often beginning in childhood. These experiences are often entwined with substance use, mental ill health, homelessness and poverty. Almost all people connected to the injustice system have experienced high levels of trauma contributing to complex health and support needs during and after imprisonment.
But instead of their needs being addressed to prevent them going to prison, people are treated as disposable, their bodies stored away behind prison walls to be tormented by staff and their unruly practices – strip searches being one of them.
Under the language of “safety” and “corrections,” prisons frequently enact forms of violence that strip people of autonomy, dignity, connection and humanity. Strip searching within prisons is framed as necessary for security and order, yet functions through degradation, control and abuse of incarcerated people. Strip searching as an operation is normalised and authorised by law despite its profound psychological and physical impacts. Strip searching means being sexually violated, routinely humiliated and re-traumatised.
Experiences of state sexual violence shape how people navigate the world. Their wellbeing, relationships, recovery and reintegration into the community following release from prison is tainted by the violence inflicted on them by officers and authorities in professional positions, preventing people from reaching out for support.
How can we ever place trust in a system that fundamentally becomes our abuser?
Institutions claiming to provide safety through outdated and violent procedures must stop! The use of the practice cannot be justified. In recognition of this, all Australian governments should ban the use of strip searches in prisons in law.
Less invasive alternatives such as body scanning technology exist. The report stresses that, with strip searches banned, these alternatives must only be used as a last resort and not replicate the coercive and punitive functions of strip searching.
The report also calls for stronger independent oversight of prisons through the urgent implementation of Australia’s obligations under the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT). This includes establishing properly resourced independent inspection bodies to conduct regular and unannounced prison inspections alongside expanding access to independent legal and advocacy services for incarcerated people to improve accountability and enable people to enforce their human rights.
Finally, the report argues that governments must address the broader crisis of mass incarceration by investing in community supports, housing, healthcare and diversion programs that reduce reliance on prisons altogether.
Australia continues to attempt to police its way out of social problems, punishing those most in need. We must care for all people and stop framing people as dangerous or risky – the risk in fact is not supporting people’s needs. Supporting people is how we make our communities safer.
The harms of strip searching are systemic, deliberate, and protected through laws, silence, and public indifference.
The time to act is now. We must stand behind the movements led by formerly incarcerated people, First Nations communities, abolitionist organisers, survivors and advocates demanding dignity, safety, accountability and care, instead of punishment and abuse. We must fight to end strip searching and all degrading practices carried out in the name of “security.”
I see it to be my responsibility to abolish the tortuous practices that take place within carceral institutions, but it is not mine alone. I am calling on you to act and sign the petition to end strip searching.
