Degrading Treatment / Strip Searches in US jails (DN!)

[lostnfound]

Incredible. Revolting. Strip searched in groups, videotapes.
Why are such sadists allowed to have control over our jails?
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/24/2110246

MARK MERIN: Yes. Well, just recently, we got preliminary approval of a settlement for $15 million to be shared among 16,000 people, who over the last four years have been arrested in Sacramento for minor crimes and then subjected to humiliating complete visual body cavity searches in groups in the Sacramento County main jail. And this had been going on for years until a group of activists who arrested in a demonstration in March of 2000 stood up to the jail administration and said, we are not going to cooperate in this dehumanizing practice that you seem to think is routine. Then they came to me, and we discovered that it wasn't just activity reserved for the activists, but it was mistreatment that was very common, and in fact once we started peeling back the layers of secrecy involved in this practice, we discovered that there were 16,000 people who were illegally strip searched.

AMY GOODMAN: Give me an example?

MARK MERIN: An example of the strip search? A group of women who didn't know each other, could be 18 years old to 78, would be brought into a room, six or eight at a time, in a room that was no longer - no larger than six by eight feet with footprints painted on the floor. Then were totally naked. They had been disrobed before they entered the room. Then they had to in groups bend over, expose their body cavities, spread their genitalia for visual inspection with someone with a flashlight looking in, harassing them, ordering them at times to jump, to dance. People -- Mormons who wear a religious garment so they can enter the temple were ordered to rip it off, or to remove it or it would be ripped off. Women who were menstruating without any sanitary napkins were required to remove tampons and stand there bleeding in other people's blood. I mean, absolutely unbelievable. And it was videotaped. All of these were archived. These videotapes were archived so that they - they thought they could actually use these to show that perhaps there was some kind of security need that they had to inspect people's crevices in order to insure that things wouldn't be smuggled in.

[lostnfound]

1. Islamic countries 'tests for virginity'..but isn't this equally barbaric?

I'm reading 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' and realized that the treatment of women there with respect to the 'morals police' forcing women to undergo 'virginity tests' isn't really any worse than the idea that peaceful protestors can be rounded up and humiliated in this manner in the US.

I am so sick of what goes on in US prisons and jails that gets no attention in mainstream media. Lately I wonder whether our society is any better than the Romans and their lions at the coliseum..

[Yupster]

2. An interesting question is

whether opposite sex workers should be around for strip searches in prison.

There are many thousands of females working in male prisons or even juvenile detention facilities throughout the country. Strip searches and forced nudity are routine.

There have been many court cases recently where inmates have sued claiming that having women watch while they are strip or cavity searched is abusive treatment. Other cases have involved women who were not guards but secretarial staff who happened to be there and stayed to watch, or even passed by and stopped to watch the nude searches.

So far the courts have ruled that it is not abusive for females to watch males being strip searched even if there is no reason for the female employee to be there to carry out her job function.

I don't know if the same applies to males watching females being strip searched. I would think they'd be more careful about that.

Opinions?

[lostnfound]

3. Complicated question but I'd favor the pretense of a civilized society

I think there should be far less strip searches and if they REALLY are deemed necessary on some occasions, it ought to be performed in the presence of same sex persons in controlled conditions -- i.e., 1 or 2 guards, perhaps 1 witness, no bystanders.

Restore the pretense that we treat each other as human beings, with respect -- even criminals.