Strip Search

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution reads: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons . . . against unreasonable searches . . . shall not be violated.” Until now. Today the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that prison officers can strip-search anyone arrested for any offense – parking ticket, violating a leash law, jaywalking, whatever – without any reasonable suspicion of contraband. The decision involved a BMW dealer whose wife was pulled over for speeding and he, in the passenger seat, was tagged for having an unpaid fine (which had in fact been paid several years earlier). When he entered the jail he was forced to strip, display his genitals, squat, and spread his butt-cheeks. Because of an (already paid) unpaid fine. (By the way, the man also happened to be black. But I’m sure that didn’t factor into any of this.) To say this was demeaning is an understatement. In the swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that “people detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals.” He cited Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh as an example, arrested initially for driving without a license plate. He added, “One of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before” the attack. What he doesn’t say is that Timothy McVeigh, if he was strip-searched at all after his original arrest, wasn’t carrying any contraband, and the “one of the terrorists” wasn’t put in jail or strip-searched and probably didn’t have any contraband on his body; he was just issued a ticket; under Kennedy’s reasoning, perhaps we should strip-search everyone who’s issued a traffic ticket. Truth is “the right of the people to be secure in their persons” is a right to privacy, if not dignity. And strip-searching anyone and everyone who is incarcerated for whatever reason in whatever penal facility is a violation of that right and an unreasonable search. As the non-non-fine-paying suspect in the court case said, “It was humiliating. It made me feel less than a man.” And indeed this decision should make us all feel less than free.