Tracy McCarter remembers vividly the first time she was strip-searched. On Rikers Island in New York, she was forced to remove every shred of clothing and bend over to expose the most intimate parts of her body to three strangers. Ms. McCarter, who was arrested after defending herself from a violent domestic partner, said it was one of the most dehumanizing moments of her life. The fact that she is a sexual assault survivor made the search especially traumatizing.
That search, and the dozens more that she experienced during the seven months she spent in jail, never recovered any contraband. “It broke me,” said Ms. McCarter.
Prison officials often say that strip searches are necessary to keep contraband, including weapons and drugs, outside of prisons. This is a worthy goal, but research suggests that strip searches don’t serve it. Modern technologies have proved to be more efficient and less dehumanizing, and ought to be more widely adopted by prisons.
Body scanners, similar to the machines used in airports across the country, allow prison officials to detect the presence of concealed items without requiring incarcerated people to undress. In recent years, red and blue states, including Ohio and New York, have purchased or expanded the use of body scanners in prisons and jails, recognizing that this technology offers a more effective and less invasive approach to prison security.
This presents a rare opportunity for bipartisan criminal justice reform. More states and prison officials must see these searches for what they are: a state-imposed violation, which some experience as a form of sexual violence, which costs states and local governments millions in lawsuit settlements, wastes hundreds of staff members’ hours and contributes to the dehumanization of incarcerated people inside American prisons.
Strip searches are a common feature of life in prison. Visits from loved ones typically end with the same procedure: A prisoner must remove every article of clothing. Turn around. Bend over. Cough. Suspicion by a guard also can lead to a strip search. Ms. McCarter estimates that some weeks, she would be subjected to half a dozen or more strip searches. Corey Devon Arthur, an incarcerated writer in a New York State prison, estimates that he has been strip-searched over 1,000 times during his nearly three decades in prisons and jails.
Research on the use of strip searches is limited, largely because few prisons release complete records of how many are conducted. The evidence that does exist points to their relative ineffectiveness. A New York Federal District Court conducted a study of 23,000 prisoners admitted to the Orange County correctional facility between 1999 and 2003. The strip searches uncovered no weapons, and they found drug-related contraband only five times. On the other side of the world, a government study of almost 900,000 strip searches in Western Australia similarly found that only 571, or 0.06 percent of all searches, turned up contraband.
Strip searches have a financial cost. Lawsuits claiming that strip-searches violate constitutional rights of prisoners and their visitors (who in some prisons and jails also endure strip searches) abound, placing a burden on taxpayers. Cases in New Jersey, New York and California have collectively cost the cities and counties involved tens of millions of dollars to settle in recent years.
A 2019 report by Washington’s Department of Corrections found that after a body scanner was installed in one prison, the average number of strip searches conducted in one month fell from nearly 2,000 to about 150. The number of contraband discoveries increased from an average of two per month to 10. The scanner also reduced the time it took prison staff members to complete a search from an average of five minutes to just seconds.
The report explained that body scanners are much more effective at detecting contraband because strip searches generally do not reveal items concealed in body cavities. County officials in Maryland and Mississippi have also credited body scanners, purchased with federal pandemic relief funds, with making their jails safer.
Ms. McCarter says that one of the most traumatic parts of the seven months she spent on Rikers Island was how women were searched while they were menstruating. Prison guards would force them to remove their tampons, after which the women would have to stuff their underpants with wads of toilet paper. “It was horrifying and humiliating,” said Ms. McCarter. “It didn’t have to happen that way.”
Strip searches can be especially traumatic for Black Americans, who experience incarceration at a far higher rate than white Americans; for some prisoners, the practice conjures the history of enslaved people being regularly stripped naked and paraded in front of potential buyers. Strip searches send “a very strong message,” said Mr. Arthur, who is Black. “You are nothing more than cattle with no agency over your own body.”
Governments and human rights groups around the world are starting to recognize the need to change the way strip searches are deployed in prisons. Human rights commissions in Australia and Canada have condemned routine strip searches as degrading and traumatic, and endorsed strict limits on when searches may be conducted.
States including Connecticut that are still wavering on whether they should purchase body scanners should take note of the ways that these scanners help maintain both the safety and the humanity of incarcerated people across the country. For institutions that continue to use strip searches, robust oversight mechanisms are essential, including requirements for supervisor approval before conducting searches and independent reviews of these searches to ensure accountability.
The vast majority of incarcerated people re-enter society, shaped by their experiences on the inside. After Ms. McCarter was released from jail, the trauma caused by strip searches followed her, and she experienced flashbacks when she saw anyone in uniform. It is possible to make prisons safer while recognizing the humanity of the people living within them. It’s not often that the solution is so simple.
