Exclusive: Ombudsman demands response from ministers after recommendation to prohibit fully naked body searches of children was ignored
government has refused to pass laws closing a loophole that allows prison staff to treat children in youth detention as adults, including the use of “oppressive” fully-naked-body strip-searches.
The 2019 MOU allowed corrective services staff from the general prison population to enter children’s detention centres during a “riot or disturbance”. The wording of that agreement, the ombudsman found, allowed corrections staff to “bring with them all the same powers for the children and young people as they have for adult prisoners in an adult correctional centre”.
The 2019 search of the three children was “oppressive”, “disproportionate to the risk posed”, and “unreasonable”, the ombudsman found. Officers from corrective services were called to the Frank Baxter Youth Justice Centre after a disturbance in which the three young people had climbed on to the roof of a building and “made a series of serious threats to the safety of staff”.
“Fully-naked-body strip searches of children and young people are neither necessary nor appropriate and do not reflect good public policy,” Miller found in his special report. Instead, the government said the MOU had been updated to give “additional guidance about the respective roles and responsibilities” of corrective services officers called to youth justice centres during cases of disturbances.
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