Compensation will be offered to more than 100 young people wrongfully arrested due to a glitch in the NSW police database.

A settlement has been reached following a Supreme Court hearing which ruled innocent claimants had not only been arrested, but in some cases strip searched and imprisoned.

The state of NSW will pay $1.85 million to the victims after a police database incorrectly showed young people were breaching their bail conditions.

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Musa Konneh, 19, headed up a four-year-long class action, after he was arrested, strip-searched and held in jail overnight because the police computer system failed to recognise that all charges against him had been dismissed.

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), which has been outspoken about the case, said the wrongful arrests had had a lasting effect on the young victims.

“One of the most serious things we can do as a society is to detain someone, and so we must only do that as a last resort,” PIAC chief executive Edward Santow said.

“When this occurs without any lawful justification, it’s a very, very serious matter.

“One of our 14-year-old clients was arrested, handcuffed and strip-searched on three separate occasions over a two-week period. He was held in custody overnight each time.”

At the time of the arrests, Senior solicitor Vavaa Mawuli told the ABC he was noticing two cases per week in the children’s court where bail breaches were being incorrectly reported.

A spokesman for NSW Police said significant work had been done to correct the cause of the problem, namely the automatic transfer of bail variation details from the courts’ database to that of the police.

– With ABC