In its last sitting days before the election the Government has put to the Assembly legislation to widen the power to strip search detainees. The Canberra Times revealed the context on Monday (''ACT ban on searches real risk to safety'', August 25, p7).
The ACT Ombudsman has advised that the long-standing practice of routine strip searching of detainees entering the Belconnen Remand Centre breaches the new Corrections Management Act. The Bill before the Assembly will permit the practice where the authorities judge it ''prudent''. No longer will there need to be a suspicion on reasonable grounds.
In the grim history of prisons, routine strip searching is recent. At least in the case of women, it began in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s and was eventually adopted around the world. It is a standard feature of Australian prisons. The audit by the Human Rights Commission of ACT remand centres outlines the practice.
''Five visits in one week would involve ten strip searches one before each visit, and one afterwards''.
Prisoners at high risk of self harm ''are to be strip searched every night before they are locked in their cell''. Taking of urine samples for drug testing, which occurs on a routine, random and compulsory basis, involves further stripping.
''The detainee is strip searched and then has to urinate, in the presence of two officers''.
The Bill's explanatory memorandum acknowledges ''the inevitable humiliation of the strip search procedure''. The Human Rights audit describes ''an invasive procedure where all clothing is removed (although the person is now to be half-clothed at all times), the mouth is checked, including under the tongue, the detainee has to run their hands through their hair and to pull their ears forward, to lift genitals or breasts, present the soles of their feet for inspection, and finally to squat and cough.''
The practice of strip searching lies on a fault line between aspiration and the reality of prison. On the one hand, there is the hope we all want to embrace: the first ACT prison will be different, it will be human rights compliant, healthy and family friendly. It will rehabilitate and be a source of pride for the ACT. On the other hand, there is the fear that prisons are brutal places where the worst of human nature is played out.
The urgent appearance of the Bill now is something of a reality check. However distasteful, the Government sees that: ''The strip search of prisoners on a random or targeted basis is an integral part of maintaining appropriate levels of safety and security.'' An X-ray body scanner is not yet cleared as safe and may never be for women. The Government finds itself in the bind that it is because it believes strip searching is key among a raft of measures essential to keep drugs out of the new prison. Strip searching is thus a marker for the goal of a drug free prison.
To achieve that goal, the Government is prepared to traumatise women and create a stressful environment that aggravates mental illness among a prison population known to be in poor mental health. It is also prepared to sacrifice its goal of a family friendly prison.
A significant number of women elect not to have contact visits from friends and family members mainly because they know they would have to be strip searched afterwards. Families and friends themselves think twice about visiting when they realise the consequences for the person they visit. On the information that is available, strip searching does not keep drugs out of prison. Over a four year period there were 41,728 strip searches at a Brisbane Women's prison. This led to only two discoveries of illicit drugs. Over a 27-month period 35,288 searches at similar prison in Victoria produced only 20 items of unspecified contraband. 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 per cent of offenders report drug use on at least one occasion during their current term of imprisonment. Around 33 per cent 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 point of principle before the Assembly is whether it will endorse in the name of the fiction of a drug-free prison a practice that undermines what a human rights compliant prison stands for.
Bill Bush is a member of the ACT Community Coalition on Corrections, the ACT Community Coalition Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform.