Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that strip searches may be conducted under any arrest circumstances, no matter how minor. The court asserted a concern over smuggled drugs or weapons, and stated that the Fourth Amendment provision against unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply to strip searches in the event of an arrest. The specific case involved the wrongful arrest of an Albert W. Florence over a purportedly unpaid fine (already paid), after which Florence was transferred between two jails and strip-searched at each one while he was held for over a week on false pretense.
The procedures endorsed by the majority are forbidden by statute in at least 10 states and are at odds with the policies of federal authorities. According to a supporting brief filed by the American Bar Association, international human rights treaties also ban the procedures.
Furthermore, Justice Stephen Breyer declared how this legal provision had already been abused:
According to opinions in the lower courts, people may be strip-searched after arrests for violating a leash law, driving without a license and failing to pay child support. Citing examples from briefs submitted to the Supreme Court, Justice Breyer wrote that people have been subjected to “the humiliation of a visual strip-search” after being arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal and riding a bicycle without an audible bell.
A nun was strip-searched, he wrote, after an arrest for trespassing during an antiwar demonstration.
There is no doubt that strip search techniques has been and will be used by law enforcement as a method of coercion, and a way to intimidate and humiliate detainees. Read the New York Times article here.
As for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy‘s concern over drugs, we acknowledge that the drug war has long been a failure: More persons are incarcerated in the U.S. than were in Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago, and this rate of imprisonment has been caused by the “War on Drugs” that began in the early 1970’s. The U.S. currently has the largest, most expensive prison system in the world, which has created a massive lower caste in American society–one that is hindered from voting, getting a job, and achieving higher education.
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