Ending strip searching in prisons
Strip searching is a degrading practice that is frequently and routinely carried out in Australian prisons, despite the availability of non-invasive alternatives such as body scanning technology. The Human Rights Law Centre advocates for an end to the dehumanising practice of routine strip searching in prisons.
PROJECT | Dignity for People in Prison
Routine strip searching is distressing and dehumanising for any person, but can be especially retraumatising for women and children in prisons who are overwhelmingly victim-survivors of physical and sexual abuse. Across Australia, children as young as 10 are being routinely strip searched by prison guards.
To put an end to routine strip searching, the Human Rights Law Centre conducts research and carries out freedom of information searches across the country to expose the frequency with which children and women are being routinely strip searched. We use this information to advocate for change.
Our work has helped secure changes including convincing the Tasmanian Government to end routine strip searching of children in Tasmanian youth prisons in 2022. In 2018, we also helped secure laws ending routine strip searching of children in the Northern Territory, and policy reforms in Victoria, which have drastically reduced the use of strip searches in women’s prisons.
In 2024, we made a joint submission to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Inquiry into the Justice Responses to Sexual Violence calling for the practice of strip searching to be abolished. In 2025, we released a new report shining a light on the harms of this unnecessary practice. We will continue to build momentum for law reform across the country.
Read our 2017 report: Total Control: Ending the routine strip searching of women in Victoria’s prisons
“Being subjected to routine strip searching robs people of their dignity and can be dehumanising and degrading for any person. There is no excuse for governments across Australia to continue to routinely strip search people in prison when there are far more effective and less intrusive ways of checking for contraband, like using x-ray scanners similar to those used at airports.”
Acknowledgement of Country
The Human Rights Law Centre acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands across Australia, including the lands of the Wurundjeri, Boon Wurrung, Gadigal, Ngunnawal, Darug and Wadawurrung people where we work from.
We pay our respect to Elders past and present. This land always was, and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land. Sovereignty has never been ceded.
WARNING: This site contains images or names of people who have passed away.