Abstract
Police misuse of strip search powers at music festivals, at train stations, in police vehicles and at other locations has been subject to sustained public attention in recent years. This article traces the evolution of strip search practices in New South Wales, explores the legal and policy context in which they have developed, highlights the individual and social harms arising from them and discusses the need for fundamental law reform. We argue that recent controversies regarding police strip searches and drug detection dog operations in New South Wales show policing to be simultaneously a law-making and a law-abusing power. By examining concepts concerned with how police construct their own working rules, police data and testimony provided to the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC), we explain how police justify conducting strip searches that should otherwise be considered unlawful.
Highlights
The police officer told me take everything off, including my underwear
There is little indication the NSW Police intend to scale down the use of strip searches or that the NSW Government is inclined to consider meaningful law reform
It is important that public debate about strip searches goes beyond individual cases that can be described as exceptional to consideration of the systemic drivers of current practices
Summary
The police officer told me take everything off, including my underwear. At that point, I realised I was going to have to get naked in front of this police officer. I did not stop crying for approximately 20 minutes (Evidence of 16 year-old girl, BRC, LECC 2019a: 10–11) He was asked to lift his shirt and show his armpits, to remove his socks and shoes. The LECC Inquiry into the use of strip searches by NSW Police is ongoing, the evidence arising from individual investigations confirms longstanding concerns that the NSW Police are increasingly and systemically engaging in unlawful strip searching practices, often enforced with the extensive use of drug detection dogs, since 2012. These concerns were first raised by the NSW Ombudsman in 2007 (NSW Ombudsman 2007) and have consistently been brought to public attention in the NSW parliament by Greens MP, David Shoebridge.. This leads us to conclude that, due to overriding political and internal police expectations, tensions between legal restrictions on police powers and how police power is exercised cannot be resolved through more law, better training or clearer guidelines
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