This is a part of No Pride in Prisons’ Abolitionist demands. These demands were originally published as a book. To see a pdf of the book, click here. To buy a copy, please email info@noprideinprisons.org.nz
Every single person incarcerated in the New Zealand prison system has been, by law, required to be sexually assaulted by officers on multiple occasions during their incarceration. This assault is in the form of a strip search. As stated in the Corrections Act 2004, a strip search in NZ can include opening the mouth of the prisoner, lifting and “rubbing” their hair, forcing the person to spread their legs and squat naked.[1] The officer also has full authority to “lift or raise,” or more accurately fondle, “fat, genitalia, and breasts.”[2]
Under the Act, every incarcerated person undergoes a strip search when they enter and leave the prison.[3] There are a wide set of other instances in which they can be searched too.[4] Assuming that very few of these people would have given consent to have their body invaded by someone in a position of authority were they not incarcerated, this is a clear instance of sexual assault.
Given the invasiveness of the searches, it is remarkable just how ineffective they are at fulfilling their stated purpose of finding and retrieving contraband. In the fiscal year 2014/15, prison officers conducted 115,166 strip searches and only found contraband in 472 instances.[5] That means that absolutely nothing was found in 99.59% of strip searches.
Following requests from No Pride in Prisons, the Department of Corrections was forced to clarify its policies around the strip searching of trans people. In one Official Information Act (OIA) request, the Department dodged the question as to who strip searches trans prisoners.[6]In a follow up, it appears that the Department scrambled to determine a policy.[7] It noted that according to section 94(1) of the Corrections Act, a “rub-down search or strip search may be carried out only by a person of the same sex as the person to be searched.”[8]
That means that trans women, who are women and consequently are ‘sexed’ as women regardless of genitalia,[9] are required to be searched by women officers. However, in the second OIA response, Corrections said that a “transgender prisoner placed in a men’s prison will be searched by male officers and a transgender prisoner placed in a women’s prison will be searched by female officers.”[10]
As the majority of trans women in New Zealand’s prisons are currently locked away in men’s prisons, most incarcerated trans women are required to be searched by male guards.[11] In practice, strip searches are even worse than they appear in policy. Incarcerated trans women whom No Pride in Prisons has talked to have told us what a strip search is like for them. They have told us about the humiliating experience of being held down as a male guard searches their bottom half, and a female guard their top half.
The stated purpose of sexually assaulting prisoners with strip searches is “preventing contraband from entering the prison,”[12] and ensuring the safety of incarcerated people and prison staff, with the implicit assumption that this justifies the use of strip searches. Given that only a small minority of contraband discovered in any kind of search are actually weapons, the majority of items smuggled into prison pose no threat to the safety of people in prisons.[13] Indeed, the Department of Corrections classifies “alcohol, communication devices, drugs, drug paraphernalia, tattoo equipment… tobacco and smoking equipment (e.g. lighters)”[14] as contraband – none of these are means for harming anybody. They are means for coping with the life-crushing boredom of imprisonment.
In a harrowing blog post, Valerie Morse details how she was strip searched up to seven times per day while in a New Zealand prison.[15] She notes how strip searches, along with other everyday practices in prisons, led her to feel an “utter sense of powerlessness.” In other words, strip searches are routinely used by officers to humiliate and demonstrate power over incarcerated people. That is their actual purpose: humiliation and dehumanisation.
Routine sexual assault to prevent prisoners from smoking or receiving tattoos does nothing to ensure the wellbeing or safety of incarcerated people. Indeed, it profoundly harms them. If conditions in prisons are so hostile that incarcerated people resort to violence, the environment must be changed on a structural level. If, as detractors have argued, it would be impossible to run a prison without resorting to institutionalised sexual assaults in the form of strip searches, No Pride in Prisons asserts that this is not an argument in favour of strip searching but in favour of the abolition of prisons.
[1]Corrections Act 2004 s 90(2).
[2]Corrections Act 2004 s 90(2).
[3]Corrections Act 2004 s 98(7).
[4]Corrections Act 2004 s 98.
[5] Jeremy Lightfoot, “Response C76659,” FYI.org.nz, 22 April 2016. https://fyi.org.nz/request/3698/response/12675/attach/html/3/Response%20C76659.pdf.html.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Jeremy Lightfoot, “Response C77626,” FYI.org.nz, 1 June 2016. https://fyi.org.nz/request/3698/response/13227/attach/html/3/Response%20C77626.pdf.html.
[8]Corrections Act 2004 s 94(1).
[9] To be ‘sexed’ means to be socially assigned a sex, usually at birth. The claim that a trans woman’s body is always a woman’s body recognises that regardless of the makeup of her genitalia, they are the genitals of a woman, and therefore women’s genitals. As sex is often, unscientifically, used as a placeholder for ‘genitals,’ it follows that a trans woman, having women’s genitals is also a woman or ‘female’ for the purposes of her sex. The reason this distinction is important is that often trans women are denied to be members of the female sex due to their genitalia.
[10] Jeremy Lightfoot, “Response C77626,” FYI.org.nz, 1 June 2016. https://fyi.org.nz/request/3698/response/13227/attach/html/3/Response%20C77626.pdf.html.
[11] Jeremy Lightfoot, “C73361 S Buchanan,” FYI.org.nz, 23 October 2015. https://fyi.org.nz/request/2867/response/10098/attach/html/3/C73361%20S%20Buchanan.pdf.html.
[12] Jeremy Lightfoot, “Response C76659,” FYI.org.nz, 22 April 2016. https://fyi.org.nz/request/3698/response/12675/attach/html/3/Response%20C76659.pdf.html.
[13] Terrence Buffery, “Response C77960,” FYI.org.nz, 15 June 2016. https://www.fyi.org.nz/request/3996/response/13427/attach/html/3/Response%20C77960.pdf.html.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Valerie Morse, “Daily Torment,” No Pride in Prisons, 19 March 2016. http://noprideinprisons.org.nz/post/141287387190/daily-torment.