Looking out: Unlawful searches
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describe the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." — Fourth Amendment, Constitution of the United States
When Alfonso Stripling returned to the cell block, he was angry. As he walked by cell number 77, I asked him to tell me what had happened. He said that he would send me a note of explanation.
His note said: "My best friend came to visit me as she has been doing for the past eight years. She passed through one of the two metal detectors with 'no problem' but the metal on her jeans set off the second detector. The visitation desk officers knew this but she was told she had to be strip searched anyway.
"She was taken to a rest room and had to take off her clothes! She cried all during the search. An hour later I was called up to the visiting area — to her crying eyes and open arms!
"She said, 'Al, I have never had so much as a parking ticket! I never broke the law! They stripped me!'
"I asked her why did she come in? She told me she started to just turn around and forget the visit, but she put her pride behind her and cried through it."
Absent of the requisite "probable cause", the "strip search" was illegal according to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
Mr Stripling's visitor's constitutional rights were violated in an egregious manner. In her case, the officers knew the metal detector alarm was being set off by the metal zipper and rivets in her jeans. A hand-held metal detector was available on the scene to hold up close to that area on her body so as to unequivocally confirm the obvious.
On top of that, the prison administration knows each visitor's criminal history, if they have one. Mr Stripling's visitor has no criminal history. Therefore, any search of her body, beyond the realm of cursory, was clearly harassment.
Besides being illegal, such invasions are deeply demoralising. Let me share another example of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison's history with you.
Some years ago, a woman who was a regular visitor came to see me. She had no criminal history. One day, a metal clasp on her bra set off the metal detector as she passed through. Of course, the visitation officer knew what caused the detector's alarm to go off.
Nevertheless, she ordered the visitor to either subject herself to a strip search or be denied visitation. The visitor explained that she was in the middle of her monthly cycle, and that she would be greatly embarrassed if she had to expose her sanitary napkin to a search. The visitation officer reiterated, "No strip search, no visit".
To make a long story short, the visitor, understandably, refused to submit to the strip search. She was told to leave the prison.
Early the following week I got a letter from her: "Brandon, I am just so sorry. I came to see you, but they would not let me unless I showed them my sanitary napkin. I knew it would be spotted with blood. Brandon, I could not let anyone see me like that. Please forgive me."
For the officer to stoop so low that she could subject another woman to such a demeaning physical and emotional invasion of her most personal privacy — well, that takes a special kind of woman.
Moreover, when visitors are subjected to strip searches and prison staff members are not (especially staff who have physical contact with prisoners), the visitors become victims, not only of illegal and demeaning privacy invasion, but of class discrimination as well.
Prison officials all over the US routinely demonstrate total disregard for the Constitution of the United States when dealing with visitors. The mean-spirited and illegal behaviour cited here, and elsewhere around the country, should raise the hackles of any lawyer who respects the US Constitution.
If you are such a lawyer, please contact me, or any prisoner, or our visitors. Together, we can change this kind of behaviour. It really needs to stop.
I will leave you with encouraging words taken from the North Coast Express magazine's Spring 2000 issue:
"In April 1998, the Senate Subcommittee on Prison Construction and Operations [in California], chaired by Senator Richard Polanco, authored Senate Bill (SB) 2016, 'The History of Prison Searches'.
"On the table was the issue of whether the CDC Director should adopt language that would require every person [to be strip searched], including inmates, custodial staff, non-custodial staff, visitors, vendors, staff officers and all other persons who come into contact with inmates in correctional facilities.
"Polanco wrote: 'Inmates' visitors are not only subjected to more extensive searches than other visitors, but are subjected to arbitrary rules for visiting, which vary from facility to facility, and from day to day. I think all persons who enter prison grounds and who come into contact with inmates should be searched in a uniform manner, as a matter of constitutional equal protection.
"'Innocent citizens should not be subjected to harassment — simply for wanting to visit a loved one in prison. Nor should they lose their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unlawful searches.'"
BY BRANDON ASTOR JONES
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns (include your name and full return address on the envelope, or prison authorities may refuse to deliver it). He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G3-77, Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA, or email <BrandonAstorJones@hotmail.com>. You can visit the author's web site at .]