Comptroller: One in four female police conscripts experience sexual harassment

Figures released by the State Comptroller’s Office show that high percentages of women performing their mandatory national service in the police, border police, and prison service are subjected to sexual harassment during the course of their service.

Such harassment is for the most part committed by professional, non-conscripted, members of those forces, including commanders, and when reported is either insufficiently addressed or not dealt with at all, the report finds

The comptroller’s report was commissioned in the wake of the Gilboa prison scandal in which senior prison officers were accused of “pimping” out female prison officials to security prisoners in 2018.

The central findings of the report show that 25 % of women performing their obligatory national service in the police, border police, and prison service, typically beginning at age 18, experience sexual harassment.

The figure is highest in the prison service, where 38% of such conscripts say they were sexually harassed during the course of their service.