Strip searches in jail 'like being raped'

Women in Australian prisons are abandoning family visits so they can avoid the trauma of strip searches, which one advocate described as like being raped.

Aunty Vickie Roach called for more Australians to get behind the prison abolition movement on Thursday, telling Victoria's truth-telling inquiry: "How many success stories do you hear out of prison?"

The Yuin woman "conservatively" estimates she has 125 convictions to her name - the first when she was two years old as a device to remove her from her mother.

Having been in and out of prison for three decades, Ms Roach likened strip searches to being raped, telling the Yoorrook Justice Commission they were required before and after family visits.

"You've got no choice - you can't say, 'no, I don't want to take my clothes off'. You understand that it's not your body anymore, it's theirs," she said.

Ms Roach recalled being arrested for the first time aged 17 after police told her if she admitted to using heroin, they would get her help. 

Instead, police threw her in jail and she ultimately served three or four months behind bars. 

Becoming institutionalised de-skilled people and essentially "lobotomised" them into compliance and conformity, she said. 

Ms Roach said she was hospitalised following a car accident and shortly afterwards sent to jail. 

It was only in court that she found out she'd been in an induced coma for days and she later had to contend with being ferried to prison in a leather escort belt while suffering through fractured ribs, sternum, skull and wrist, and internal injuries.

Ms Roach recalled being forced into rapid heroin withdrawals when she was sent to prison and receiving relief only in the first few days.

She called for prisoners to be helped to humanely and safely withdraw from drugs.

Eddie Cubillo, an associate dean at the University of Melbourne's law school, shared his experiences of racism in the legal system.

The lawyer recounted times when court staff would see he was Aboriginal and confused him with an offender.

Even while working in the Northern Territory's Don Dale Royal Commission, Dr Cubillo was asked whether he was in the wrong courtroom. 

"How do you get justice when you're already judged by the colour of your skin?" he said on Thursday. 

Dr Cubillo said some students at the university still mistook him for a cleaner when he walked in the corridors. 

He called on Yoorrook to be different from previous royal commissions because governments had ignored recommendations for years. 

"This is not a game for us ... our kids' and our families' lives are at stake," he said.

Experts from Victorian Legal Aid, the Human Rights Law Centre and RMIT's Centre for Innovative Justice also gave evidence on Thursday, echoing earlier calls for urgent reforms.

These included increasing the minimum age of criminal responsibility, changing the state's bail laws and stopping police from investigating themselves. 

The nation's first truth-telling inquiry is examining injustices experienced by First Nations peoples as Victoria embarks on a path towards a treaty or treaties.