General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "For an educated middle-class woman to face public arrest and a strip search is almost unimaginable" [View all]Downtown Hound
(12,618 posts)Then she can sue for damages, and rightly so.
No matter how you try and spin it, the strip search isn't done for punishment. It's done for safety. People in jail are forced to wear humiliating clothing such as orange jumpsuits or black and white stripes, be shackled in chains while going to court, and a whole host of other indignities when they have yet to be convicted. If somebody is wrongfully put through this experience then they are entitled to an apology and monetary compensation.
You will find no greater advocate of prison reform than me. But I also recognize that the need for security in a jail is important and just as vital to the civil rights of the inmates as their dignity is. People have a right to expect to be safe while incarcerated, and we can't really do that unless we make sure that outside weapons don't find their way in there, now can we?
Tell me, in all of your obviously vast knowledge of how to run a jail, what is you solution to preventing violence and controlling the spread of weapons among inmates?