A class action against police strip searches at festivals, brought by Slater and Gordon and Redfern legal centre, has heard closing arguments in the NSW Supreme Court.
The class action involves 3000 people alleging that they were subject to alleged unlawful strip searches between the periods of 2016-2022 at music festivals.
The topic of strip searches at music festivals has been debated in recent years with organisations like Redfern Legal Centre implementing the Police Accountability Dashboard.
University of Wollongong criminal law and justice expert, Dr Julia Quilter said that the wider picture around NSW’s ‘war on drugs’ and zero tolerance model needs to be re-evaluated.
“I think that this is about a change in discourse and understanding of drugs and that we should be moving more towards a harm minimisation and a medical approach to these things, not a policing approach,” Dr Quilter said.
In 2023-24, strip-searches uncovered weapons or drugs on 45 percent of festival goers.
Since October 2020 there has been a fairly consistent gap between drugs and weapons found and not found, according to BOSCAR data.
Source: BOSCAR
The current legislation governed by the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities Act) 2002 describes police powers.
BOSCAR has also released dat on young people, below the age of 18, who have been stripped searched by NSW Police since October 2020.
Source: BOSCAR
Dr Quilter outlined that there is scope for better training to be given to police officers to outline what the law allows, and believes that the issue of strip searches is overall disproportionate.
“The real risks are that young people are going to do things like pre-load ahead of time…try and secrete drugs in cavities which is incredibly dangerous or they may go into a music festival and try and buy drugs off a stranger,” Dr Quilter said.
A decision is yet to be handed down on the class action.
Additional reporting; Aleksandar Sekulovski
