New report proves strip searches don’t work
Friday, 1 August 2025
Sniffer dog at Redfern Station. Photo credit: Sniff Off via Facebook
A new report from Redfern Legal Centre (RLC) has revealed some damning statistics about police strip searches in NSW. The very detailed report looks at the number of strip searches in NSW between 2014 and 2023, how many of these came from sniffer dog indications, and how many charges and convictions resulted. The numbers call into question the justification for traumatic intrusive strip searches, in the name of “drug supply reduction”. In the 10 years covered by the report, NSW Police strip searched 82,471 people. Of these, only 1,182 were convicted of supply — a mere 1.43%. That’s a lot of trauma inflicted, for very little supply reduction.
RLC have long been supporting people impacted by strip searches. They are currently representing 3000 music festival-goers suing the NSW government for unlawful strip searches. Their attempts to obtain the statistics in the report through the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009, which is supposed to allow for freedom of information, were rebuffed. However, the data was obtained by Harm Reduction Australia through the process of Greens MP Cate Faehrmann using Questions on Notice in the NSW parliament.
The numbers suggest that strip searches are next to useless for their stated purpose of supply reduction, and highly discriminatory in regard to who is targeted. The report also shows how racial and class-based biases in targeting are repeated at every step along the legal process, for example in diversion programs that are offered at the discretion of police.
Trauma
As well as looking at numbers, the report looks at the human cost of strip searches. It uses testimony that people subjected to searches gave in media interviews and to various legal cases, as well as the RLC’s own research. The picture that emerges is of an ugly pattern of humiliating, degrading, threatening, coercive and traumatising treatment of people by police.
“Victims of strip searches have likened the trauma to that of sexual assault,” the report says. “Strip searches can also re-traumatise individuals who have experienced sexual assault. In most cases, these searches are conducted with little regard for the mental health and wellbeing of the person involved.”
The accounts include instances of police behaviour of questionable legality, such as the notorious demand to squat and cough, internal searches, and women being strip searched while wholly or partially visible to male police officers. Some of the accounts strongly suggest that coercion or intimidation is often the intent of police strip searching someone. For example, the 2019 coronial inquest into the deaths of 6 music festival patrons heard from a woman who was threatened by police that they would make her strip search “nice and slow”.
The report describes strip searching as inherently humiliating and degrading, regardless of whether protocols are correctly observed. As Brooke Hayden from Western Sydney told news.com.au, describing her strip search at the 2023 Knockout Festival, “No one really wants to be felt up by a police officer.”
Festivals
One of the recommendations of the Drug Summit held by the NSW government last year was to “cease the use of drug detection dogs and strip searches for suspected drug possession during the current trial of drug-checking services at music festivals, with consideration given to extending this approach to all music festivals.”
The government has chosen to ignore this recommendation, and police with drug dogs have had a visible presence at music festivals this year, including those with the drug checking services. Premier Chris Minns gave the often-asserted justification that police and drug dogs at festivals are a deterrent to dangerous drug consumption. But the report points out that they actually encourage risky drug taking behaviour.
Saturation policing with dogs is a deterrent to using drug checking services, and an incentive to take risks to avoid detection. Expert witnesses told the 2019 inquest that avoiding detection by police leads to “panicked ingestion, preloading (taking larger quantities of drugs prior to arriving at the festival), packing (internal concealment of drugs), buying inside, and changing drugs.”
Policy failure
It is not just at festivals that strip searches and saturation drug dog policing undermines harm reduction. While harm reduction and supply reduction (through law enforcement) are both official pillars of the government’s drug harm minimisation strategy, budget allocated to the police for ‘drug supply reduction’ is 40 times more than the allocation for the entire harm reduction sector in NSW.
The RLC’s figures show that this emphasis on law enforcement has very little effect on drug supply. Of the 82,471 people strip searched by NSW police for drugs between 2014 and 2023, 71,335 had nothing on them at all — 86.5% or almost 9 out of 10. Moreover, the minority of strip searches that did find illicit drugs led mostly to charges of possession, not supply.
Of all those strip searched, only 10.45% were charged with possession, and 2.45% were charged with supply. Some of those charged were found not guilty in court. Only 6.43% of those searched were convicted for possession and only 1.43% convicted for supply.
This is hardly surprising given the random nature of the searches. Police with drug dogs at a suburban railway station are unlikely to uncover many global drug trafficking rings!
Drug dogs were the pretext for 6,716 strip searches between 2014 and 2023, or 8.14% of the total. Of those strip searched after a dog indication, 8.25% were convicted of possession and 1.55% convicted of supply.
Racism
“First Nations peoples are disproportionately targeted by police with drug dogs and strip searches,” the report notes. RLC data reveals that the percentage of Indigenous people strip searched by police is 3 times higher than the percentage of the overall population. One factor identified is which geographical areas are targeted: “Strip searches were more likely to occur in or near First Nations communities, with Dubbo recording the highest number of strip searches in any regional area. Strip searches were also 6.5 times more likely to take place at Redfern train station compared to Central or Kings Cross stations.”
Another factor is that the overuse of strip searches for drugs adds to an already existing situation in which Indigenous communities are overpoliced, and racial profiling (and racism in general) is entrenched in police culture. The RLC statistics do not include figures for how many of those charged were legal minors (under 18), but the law allows for strip searching children as young as 10, disproportionately impacting First Nations children.
Racism against Indigenous people is not the only type of prejudice entrenched in police culture. The low number of charges and convictions reflects the high level of police discretion involved in strip searches for drugs. People are searched purely because cops think they seem suspicious. Inevitably this means conscious and unconscious biases come into play and “the usual suspects” are targeted.
Diversion programs
The ‘punish don’t support’ approach of NSW police is also reflected in their reluctance to use the Early Drug Diversion Initiative (EDDI), introduced in February 2024, which means that police can issue a $400 fine instead of a court summons to those caught in possession of a personal use quantity of drugs. However, this is entirely at the cops’ discretion and in the first 6 months of the scheme’s operation, less than 7% of people caught with personal use quantities were offered the option of the diversion program.
Again, racism is a factor. Under the EDDI system, First Nations people are 4.5 times more likely to be charged than non-Indigenous people. Under the earlier Cannabis Cautioning Scheme, introduced in 2000, 12% of eligible Aboriginal adults were cautioned by NSW Police, compared to 44% of non-Aboriginal adults, the Aboriginal Legal Service reported in 2023. Data published in December 2020 showed similar racial biases in the operation of the Cannabis Cautioning Scheme, along with “postcode bias” — the discrimination against those from poorer communities. These figures show that only 24% of people caught with cannabis in the Upper Hunter Shire got off with a caution, while 75% of those in North Sydney did.
Conclusion
At Users News we have long argued that criminalisation is counterproductive. The Redfern Legal Centre report presents the evidence. The harm reduction sector has a proven track record of improving thousands of lives and even saving a few. The budget for “supply reduction” is 40 times higher than harm reduction, but is spent on traumatising thousands of people while having almost no effect on drug supply. The report concluded with the following recommendations for the NSW Government and NSW Police:
End the use of strip searches conducted based on suspicion of minor drug possession.
End all strip searches of children under 18 years of age.
Cease the use of drug dogs at festivals, events and venues.
Mandate the offer of diversion alternatives to all persons caught with personal use amounts of any illicit drug.
Disclose the annual financial and personnel costs incurred by NSW Police in maintaining and deploying the drug detection dogs including any impact on community safety and wellbeing.
Publicly release annual data on the number and outcomes of strip searches conducted each year
Introduce evidence-based drug reforms and expand harm reduction programs as a matter of urgency.