Showing posts with label strip search. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strip search. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Strip Search: the Supreme Court's Attack on the Fourth Amendment

nude- nomadic politicsby Nomad
In yet another questionable ruling, the Supreme Court has decided in a 5-4 vote that police departments have every right to demand a strip search from any person they arrested, even for minor offenses, “before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.” 
To clarify (somewhat) the meaning of the terms: According to Daphne Ha, writing for the Fordham Law Review:

A strip search is “[a] search of a person conducted after that person’s clothes have been removed, the purpose usu[ally] being to find any contraband the person might be hiding.”
Strip searches generally do not involve scrutiny of body cavities. However, policies in correctional facilities tend to include visual body cavity searches under the broad term “strip searches,” and only distinguish between visual and physical body cavity searches. This definitional problem is aggravated when courts describe strip search policies without clarifying whether a search includes a visual search of body cavities.