Impotant: Strip Search

choi

本文通过一路BBS站telnet客户端发布

Robert Barnes, Supreme Court Is Asked About Jails’ Blanket Strip-Search Policies. Washington POst, Sept 12, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-is-asked-about-jails-blanket-strip-search-policies/2011/09/09/gIQAuc6vNK_story.html
("But more recently, appeals courts in Atlanta, San Francisco and the one in Philadelphia that ruled against Florence have disagreed. They said the Fourth Amendment does not forbid a blanket policy of strip-searching those sent into the general prison population, no matter the charge")

My comment:
(a) The report cited Bell v Wolkish, 441 US 520 (1979), which in Part III D stated,

"Inmates at all Bureau of Prisons facilities, including the MCC [Metropolitan Correctional Center at New York City, whose regulations inmates challenged], are required to expose their body cavities for visual inspection as a part of a strip search conducted after every contact visit with a person from outside the institution. * * * We do not underestimate the degree to which these searches may invade the personal privacy of inmates. Nor do we doubt, as the District Court noted, that on occasion a security guard may conduct the search in an abusive fashion. Such abuse cannot be condoned. The searches must be conducted in a reasonable manner. But we deal here with the question whether visual body-cavity inspections as contemplated by the MCC rules can ever be conducted on less than probable cause. Balancing the significant and legitimate security interests of the institution against the privacy interests of the inmates, we conclude that they can."

(b) On May 25, 2011 a Chinese (I could not tell whether it was a mana or a woman; for convenience, I will use "he") wrote a piece "刚从监狱出来，交完了保释金" in Mitbbs, saying that he parked his car in front of a government building, whose security said he could not. When he attempted to drive away, he backed his car and hit a stop sign. Security apparently wanted to call police but the driver wanted to leave. There was a scuffle but he left anyway. Local police went to his house that night, arrested him, and brought him to a pretrial detention center. Because his spouse did not bail him out after a handful of hours, he received strip search and sent to general population of a prison for two days.

I have no idea why "two days;" it could be a weekend when court was not open for business (arraignment, that is).
(c) It was surprising to me. He seemed to live in San Francisco, part (headquarters actually) of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Atlanta and Philadelphia are, respectively, the headquarters of the Eleventh and Third Circuits.

Boston, where I live, is the headquarters of the First Circuit.

First Circuit ruled differently on this issue. If a person is arrested for a non-violent crime and there is no expectation that he carries contraband (a weapon or drug), he or she will not get strip search in this circuit. Equally important, a person in this situation will be held in a single-occupancy cell in the basement of a police station--so there is no worry that the arrestee will exchange things with or harm another arrestee.

Thus, when I read the posting mentioned above, I was surprised by what happened in other circuits.

(d) It is important to follow that Supreme Court case, because if Supreme Court rules for Mr Albert Florence, all arrestees in similar situation will be compensated, too. But they will have to act fast because some states only allow two years, whereas some other states allows three years, to file a civil action.


--