Unsurprisingly, the recently released
Rethinking Strip Searches by NSW Police report drew the ire of
the force. Commissioned by the Redfern Legal Centre, the UNSW
report caused reigning state police commissioner Mick Fuller to
criticise it very publicly.
At a
29 August budget estimates hearing, Fuller suggested that the
researchers needed to do more work on their statistics, while
in mid-September, the top cop tried unsuccessfully to prevent
the strip search document being added to the record of the state
inquest into deaths at music festivals.
The strip search report sets out that between 2006 and the
present, the strip searches by NSW police have increased
twentyfold. And it calls for an overhaul of strip search laws, so
as to clarify – in a more precise way – how officers of
the law should be carrying out this invasive practice.
