ACT's persistence with spit hoods must end urgently

They also cause psychological issues and trauma for the people subjected to them. They are dangerous tools, where the risk to people's health, safety, and life, outweighs the benefits to officer safety.

Spit hoods are especially dangerous when used on people with existing conditions, or minors, as they often are. The 2017 Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory called their use "inhumane".

They are also, given the make-up of police interactions, more likely to be used on First Nations people, people of colour, and people with disabilities. This is a sad fact of the carceral system that we have in this country, that targets and over-represents such peoples, but it is worth noting the use of spit hoods puts at further risk of harm peoples already at severe risk of harm and death within the police and justice systems.

Due to these various issues, in the last year, spit hoods used against people in custody have been banned in some form in three jurisdictions; banned outright in South Australia, banned in watchhouses and against minors in Queensland, and as recently as this month, banned against minors in the Northern Territory.

Every other state deems them wholly unnecessary and does not use them in a majority of settings. NSW does not use them in any form, for minors or for adults. And yet, here in the ACT, not only do we continue to use them, but we continue to use them on minors. This is a disgrace.

At an estimates hearing this year, the chief police officer of the ACT Neil Gaughan revealed not only does the ACT still maintain the use of spit hoods, but they also were used as recently as this year on a 16-year-old girl.

Upon further questioning, he indicated it was "inappropriate" for officers to be using other options, including PPE, and ACT Policing had not consulted with any other jurisdiction on alternatives to the spit hood. The Australian Federal Police Association (AFPA) deflected claims of accountability to instead attack political parties calling for their banning.

Organisations around and outside the territory have called for the use of these cruel devices to be ended, especially against minors.

The ACT Human Rights Commission expressed serious concern about the use of spit hoods, ACT Policing's lack of data on their use, and called on the ACT government to take "urgent action" in banning the use of spit hoods across the ACT.

First Nations-led advocacy organisation Change the Record has also called for a ban, executive officer Sophie Trevitt saying "it beggars belief why spit hoods would still be in use in a so-called human rights jurisdiction like the ACT when other states and territories use alternatives". Beggars belief, indeed.

The government of the ACT, including especially Police and Corrections Minister Mick Gentleman and Chief Minister Andrew Barr, should be publicly shamed over this issue. It is unconscionable, unnecessary and not what we should expect from our government. The use of spit hoods against any person, let alone people under the age of 18, has been deemed so inappropriate by every other state and territory they are not used against minors in any jurisdiction, including being outright banned against all peoples in some.

And yet the ACT remains a final bastion of torture in a sea of prevention. For a government that loves to laud itself for its progressive values and human rights, and celebrate its action on the national stage on everything from solar power to environmental policy, we have been left last on one of the few issues that should have national unity - respect for the human rights of people in custody. What is the point of a government which displays such hypocritical inaction?

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The AFPA would rather attack political parties and human rights organisations calling for the human rights of people in custody than explain why they are so necessary, and Chief Gaughan has declared as safe a device no other police agency in the country wholly believes is so. Alternative PPE exists, and is used everywhere else, but not here.

Is it that people in Fyshwick are somehow more dangerous than the ones across the border in Queanbeyan, or in Adelaide, Darwin, or Brisbane? Is there some inherent risk the people of the ACT pose to police that no other police department in the country has found from their citizens? Or are police in the ACT so incapable of doing their jobs, and unable to wear PPE instead to protect themselves, like every other jurisdiction mandates?

The use of spit hoods in the ACT should have ended long ago. Now that we're last in the nation, it should happen as a matter of urgency.