Opinion ID: 1164314
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Opposite-sex Search as Indignity.

Text: The guarantee against unnecessary rigor is not directed specifically at methods or conditions of punishment, which are the focus of article I, sections 15 and 16, as section 13 extends to anyone who is arrested or jailed; nor is it a standard confined only to such historically rigorous practices as shackles, the ball and chain, or to physically brutal treatment or conditions, though these are the most obvious examples. Thus the Indiana Supreme Court wrote, in sustaining a conviction of police officers for assault and battery on a prisoner: The law protects persons charged with crime from ill or unjust treatment at all times. Only reasonable and necessary force may be used in making an arrest,... `no person arrested, or confined in jail, shall be treated with unnecessary rigor,' section 15, art. 1, Const.... . `While the law protects the police officer in the proper discharge of his duties, it must at the same time just as effectively protect the individual from the abuse of the police.' U.S. v. Pabalan (1917) 37 Philippine 352, 354. Bonahoon v. State, 203 Ind. 51, 178 N.E. 570, 571, 79 A.L.R. 453, 456 (1931). [16] Unnecessary rigor is not to be equated only with beatings or other forms of brutality. Thus Georgia's phrasing of the constitutional clause, supra note 15, is simply that prisoners shall not be abused. Since it is unnecessary rigor that is proscribed, the first question under this clause is whether a particular prison or police practice would be recognized as an abuse to the extent that it cannot be justified by necessity. There is no attempt in this case to broaden this principle so as to disregard the numerous and pervasive conditions intrinsic to the life of prisoners to which persons who have not forfeited their liberty would not willingly submit. Those sentenced to prison forfeit many rights that accompany freedom. Here there is no claim that the challenged shakedown or pat-down searches in themselves were improper or could not properly be performed by officers of the same sex as the prisoners. Only the forced exposure to intimate touching by guards of the opposite sex, in the institutional context of the prison, is here claimed to invade the constitutionally protected sphere. In brief, the prisoners' objections are to the imposition of a needless indignity, to an invasion of the prisoners' residuum of personal dignity that is an imposition insofar as it goes beyond recognized necessity. It is widely recognized, first, that even convicted prisoners retain claims to personal dignity, and also that under the conditions of arrest and imprisonment the relation between the sexes poses particularly sensitive issues. These assumptions underlie most contemporary statements of the relevant standards for penal institutions. Thus the Federal Standards for Corrections published by the Department of Justice postulate that [e]ach facility develops and implements policies and procedures governing searches and seizures to ensure that undue and unnecessary force, embarrassment or indignity to the individual is avoided. Specifically, when body searches are required, staff personnel avoid unnecessary force and strive to preserve the dignity and integrity of the inmate. [17] Issues of dignity or embarrassment and indignity arising from sexual differences traditionally have been stated with a view of the rights of female prisoners. Standards for jails published by the Department's Bureau of Prisons stress, in connection with searches of newly admitted prisoners, that [n]aturally, admission for women should be completely separate from that for men and should be conducted by female staff members. They continue with the advice that [t]he following conditions must be met if difficulties are to be avoided in jails housing both male and female prisoners: 1. Women prisoners must be completely separated from male prisoners, with no possibility of communication by sight or sound. 2. All supervision of female prisoners must be by female employees. In the larger jail a full-time matron should provide constant supervision. Smaller jails may have a part-time matron who retains the key to the women's section and is on call as needed. 3. Male employees must be forbidden to enter the women's section unless they are accompanied by the matron. [18] These federal standards reflect principles also found in nonofficial sources, such as the American Bar Association's Standards of Criminal Justice [19] and the American Correctional Association's Manual of Correctional Standards. [20] Indeed, the same principles have been a worldwide concern recognized by the United Nations and other multinational bodies. [21] The various formulations in these different sources in themselves are not constitutional law. We cite them here as contemporary expressions of the same concern with minimizing needlessly harsh, degrading, or dehumanizing treatment of prisoners that is expressed in article I, section 13. Thus the questions to be considered are whether a practice of body searches including sexually intimate areas by officers of the opposite sex, even though the prisoner remains clothed, constitutes a cognizable indignity and if so, whether it is justified by necessity. It must be recognized that what is or is not an indignity is largely a matter of social and individual psychology. Like punishment, see Brown v. Multnomah County Dist. Ct., 280 Or. 95, 105-108, 570 P.2d 52 (1977), a practice may appear to be so from the purpose of its imposition, or from the viewpoint of the prisoner, or in the perception of the general public. Moreover, such views may differ widely among individuals and change over time with changing social expectations about the relations between the sexes. Here there is no claim that shakedowns by female guards were purposely designed to humiliate the prisoners. There is evidence, as one would expect, that different prisoners did not express the same reactions to being searched by the female guards as plaintiffs did. A psychologist employed at the prison estimated that perhaps a third of the prisoners considered the contacts involved in patdowns by female officers offensive. As to the view of such contacts common in society at large, we think it is within the range of judicial knowledge without the need for evidence. The special significance accorded to intimate as distinct from ordinary touching is reflected in our criminal law, which singles out the unconsented but otherwise uninjurious touching of the sexual or other intimate parts for prosecution as a crime when it is sexually motivated. ORS 163.305(6), 163.415. The Court of Appeals referred to the assumption that the final bastion of privacy is to be found in the area of human procreation and excretion, and that [if] a person is entitled to any shred of privacy, then it is to privacy as to these matters. 44 Or. App. at 761, 607 P.2d 206. We agree that this still represents prevailing social assumptions. From this, the court further reasoned that if a prisoner is entitled  absent an emergency  to be free of visual inspection by prison personnel while in the nude (which prison officials conceded), the prisoner is equally entitled to be free from the tactile equivalent of the nude inspection, viz., manual examination of the anal-genital area through clothing. Id. Again, there should be no doubt that this equation would be recognized in society at large. If the same equation is denied in contacts between prisoner and guard, it can only be because the prisoner is expected to abandon his outside sense of personal dignity in matters of bodily privacy, which begs the question. Otherwise, such a manual search of one's private parts will be inoffensive only when it is granted to be a matter of necessity. As mentioned above, these concerns traditionally arise in providing for the proper treatment of female prisoners. That prevailing social standards entitle women to be searched only by female officers is accepted as obvious without evidence of individual attitudes. [22] The superintendent of the Oregon Women's Correctional Center testified that male guards do not frisk female prisoners. It may be too simple to assume that the reverse situation with respect to male prisoners is equally obvious. For ancient and continuing reasons, perhaps more women will fear or resent intrusive observation and touching by male officers than vice versa. The context is more important than formal equivalence. In the setting of medical and hospital care, women have long accepted the ministrations of male physicians and men have accepted those of female nurses and, more recently, female physicians; but there the health of the patient's body itself is the object and the purpose of the contact is to help. The hospital is not an adversary setting of mistrustful authority on one side and compelled subjugation on the other. Formal equivalence aside, however, we know no reason to conclude that society denies to men in the prison setting a sense of the proprieties that it unquestioningly grants women in the same setting. Once this is granted, the question becomes whether body searches of male prisoners by female officers is justified by necessity.