Advocates are calling for a nationwide ban on spit hoods – which have been linked to deaths in custody – after New South Wales became the second state to outlaw the use of the restraint devices.
The Ban Spit Hoods Coalition, which works to end the use of the fabric device which is placed over people’s heads in custodial settings, said spit hoods were an unacceptable threat to human life and dignity and that all states and territories should follow the lead of NSW and South Australia, with the latter state the first to ban its use in 2021.
“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to be grossly overrepresented at all stages of the criminal legal system and bear the brunt of any harmful restraint mechanism,” said Karly Warner, the chief executive of the Aboriginal Legal Service in NSW and the ACT.
On Thursday, the NSW government enacted a legislative ban, with support from the opposition and Greens, on the use of spit hoods in mental health care settings and in adult and youth prisons.
“It is not often that the Liberal party, the Labor party, the Greens and the Nationals all agree on a piece of legislation, but this bill has achieved exactly that. It pools our agreement because of the barbaric act of using spit hoods in the past,” Labor MP Hugh McDermott told the parliament on behalf of the attorney general, Michael Daley.
“We have seen horrific actions in the Northern Territory and other places where spit hoods have been used. There is no place in Australia for such things, or anywhere else.”
The use of spit hoods on children in youth detention was banned in the Northern Territory in 2016. But last year, it was revealed Northern Territory police had used spit hoods on children at least 27 times since the ban in 2016, in a move the territory’s ombudsman labelled “extraordinary”.
Gunggari woman Maggie Munn, the national director of Change the Record, said the bill passing in NSW is a testament to the advocacy of families who had lost loved ones to the use of spit hoods in custodial settings.
“We won’t stop advocating and campaigning until these torture devices are banned in every jurisdiction by law,” they said.
In 2021, Selesa Tafaifa died after being restrained by staff at the Townsville women’s correctional centre in Queensland and placed in a spit hood.
A coronial inquest into her death was told the 45-year-old Samoan woman told Queensland prison guards four times that she couldn’t breathe and pleaded for her asthma medication six times before dying in custody.
Mark Taylor, a NSW Liberal MP and the shadow minister for corrections, said the bill supports the view of a number of human rights organisations as well as the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
“[The AFP] recommended that spit hood use be discontinued in view of the limited evidence that biting or spitting assaults pose a medical risk to the victim,” he told the parliament. “The bill makes it clear that spit hoods will never have a place in detention centres in New South Wales.”
