Police Inhuman Treatment of Female Offenders Essay

Police Inhuman Treatment of Female Offenders - Essay Example She believes her complaint would have been "swept under the carpet" if not for a letter on her behalf from former Supreme Court judge Ted Mullighan’ (news.com.au). The news primarily deals with the complaint of one ‘Lee’ (name changed) who was picked up by the police when she had failed to attend a court hearing on a minor theft from a shop in the 1990s. It had taken the court proceedings and police more than 13 years to pick her up from the same address where she had been residing since the time she had committed the offense. She was stripped naked by four male police and put in the padded cell for about an hour before letting her join the rest of the jail inmates. As a child, Lee was sexually abused in a foster home and gave evidence to the same in the Mullighan inquiry. She is a mother of three children and for her, this incident ‘was like being raped all over again†¦I cant put words to what they have done to me, it is just inhumane’. She had lodged a complaint to the complaints authority in 2006, the verdict of which is still awaited. Judge Mulligan has said that despite her traumatic childhood experience, Lee has largely kept herself out of any trouble and has brought up her children alone. Since her complaint, more people have come out in her support, who themselves had undergone same humiliation in the Christie beach police station. In a letter to Police Commissioner Mal Hyde, obtained by The Advertiser, the Police Complaints Authority says it has "long-standing disquiet" over the practice, which has been labeled "violent and disturbing" by civil libertarians. The complaints authority investigator, Helen Lines has been concerned about the practice that violates the personal dignity of the persons and ‘would focus on the practice of using padded cells to confine distressed prisoners to prevent them from harming themselves with their clothing’. George Mancini of SA. Council of Civil Liberties has also been shocked at the ‘humiliating and violent’ practice and says that the distressed prisoners need to be handled with more sensitivity and care.