Thomson's solicitor was indignant. ''He had to take all of his clothes off and stand naked in front of these two galoots who then took him into the court and sat each side of him.'' I think there is a bit missing out of the middle of that sentence, but you could never be sure: you have to believe the reporter and imagine the scene in the courtroom, and then thank your stars that you are not a magistrate.

But seriously, the reason for people having to strip naked before going to court has nothing to do with protecting correction officers. It is the modern equivalent of ancient methods of determining whether someone was guilty. For example, those accused of witchcraft used to be examined for moles, birthmarks or unusual scars - an extra nipple was a dead giveaway - and clearly you had to strip for such an inspection. This, by the way, is the origin of the word subpoena, because of where these distinguishing marks might sometimes be found.

There are other methods that might also be applied to Thomson, like dropping a stone into a vat of boiling oil and requiring him to pick it out; if he refused, he would be found guilty. Or he could be taken out to the middle of Lake Burley Griffin and dropped into the water; if he sank, he was guilty - he would also be drowned of course, but at least it would save the expense of a trial.

Fortunately, we have gone beyond those barbaric ways of determining guilt and innocence and now use media leaks and political point scoring and PR people at $500 an hour to help a court make up its mind. Oh, and also hinting that the person in question liked to strip in front of strangers, nudge nudge.

However, to come back again to the assertion that correction officers are required to protect themselves from danger by making an accused person strip naked. The real reason is quite different. It is actually part of a longitudinal study being carried out by a major university to try to predict guilt and innocence by certain physical attributes of the charged person. For some reason, the university in question denies that it is involved in such a study.

Observations are made about the disposition of the naked person and in particular of a part of the anatomy that can only be studied properly when the person is without clothing. Officers wear gloves and no physical contact is involved; the gloves are for a patina of scientific respectability.

It was suggested that they should also wear white coats, as in the famous Milgram experiments where subjects were persuaded to give ''lethal'' electric shocks, but this was thought unnecessary because the subjects - bikies, MPs - were not the kind of people likely to be impressed by white coats.

At any rate, the officers would agree a number between 1 and 10, called for some obscure reason, the Q-number, to indicate their observation: 1 being brass monkey and 10 being rampant. The Q-number would be adjusted to take account of ambient temperature and would then be compared with the subsequent result of the trial in the hope that a correlation could be established. It is thought that a correlation coefficient above 0.9 between guilt and a three-point range of Q-numbers would be significant.

Since the study has been going on for some years, the experiment is nearing completion and several academic papers are being prepared, with bar graphs and histograms and complicated formulae. It will bring enormous credit to Australia.

So, my advice to Thomson is to get his trial over as quickly as possible, because after what happened at Wyong they have his Q-number and if there is a new government later in the year that number might be used to find him guilty.

He would not be the only one, of course, but the new government would have no difficulty in presenting the scheme as a huge saving of taxpayer funds which could then be used to produce a surplus. And Thomson should stay from Lake Burley Griffin.

Anyway, that's what I think.

Frank O'Shea is a Canberra writer.