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

Heading: The constitutional right of prisoners to be protected from treatment with unnecessary rigor as a ground to prohibit pat-down searches by guards of the opposite sex.

Text: The opinion by the majority is indeed a scholarly opinion. I do not, however, agree with the majority in its holding that prisoners have a constitutional right under Article I, § 13 of the Oregon Constitution to protection against such searches. It may be, for reasons stated by the majority, that to hold that prisoners have a constitutional right of privacy is to adopt a concept subject to the criticism that [a] concept in danger of embracing everything is a concept in danger of conveying nothing, and that the law should not pay [such] a price in clarity and cogency, as stated by the majority. (P. 127). To me, however, the concept that a prisoner's constitutional right to be protected against treatment with unnecessary rigor is subject to much the same criticism, particularly when extended to what prisoners may consider to be unnecessary searches. I am also concerned that to confer upon prisoners a constitutional right to object to such searches may open a Pandora's Box from which prisoners may, by habeas corpus or otherwise, deluge the courts with litigation based upon claims that many of the rules and practices customary in the operation of penal institutions are unnecessarily rigorous. If required to choose between a constitutional right of privacy and a constitutional right to object to treatment which is unnecessarily rigorous, I would choose the former for the reasons stated by the majority opinion of the Court of Appeals, despite its conceptual problems. Indeed, the majority states that: It may well be that the interest asserted by the prisoners in this case can be brought within one of the kinds of `privacy' said to be protected by unexpressed penumbras of the United States Constitution. See Gunther v. Iowa State Men's Reform., 612 F.2d 1079 (8th Cir.1980) cert. den. 446 U.S. 966, 100 S.Ct. 2942, 64 L.Ed.2d 825 (1980). (P. 129). If, however, some other basis must be found for decision of this case, it is my view that this case can be properly decided without the necessity of finding a constitutional basis for prisoners' rights, thus engraving them in stone beyond the reach of the legislature. First of all, the right of privacy has a basis in ordinary tort law, subject to protection in civil litigation. By reason of ORS 137.275 prisoners in Oregon retain all civil rights, including the right to maintain civil actions or suits, except as otherwise provided by law. Furthermore, and aside from the question whether prisoners may have such a right of privacy, enforceable by civil actions or suits, the majority calls attention to ORS 421.245, Art. IV(5) and ORS 421.284, Art. IV(e) which require that inmates of correctional institutions shall be treated in a reasonable and humane manner. (P. 129). The majority also refers to Federal Standards for Corrections published by the Department of Justice which provide, among other things, that [a]ll supervision of female prisoners must be by female employees. (P. 130). The majority goes on to say: That prevailing social standards entitle women to be searched only by female officers is accepted as obvious without evidence of individual attitudes. The superintendent of the Oregon Women's Correctional Center testified that male guards do not frisk female prisoners. (P. 132). and that: 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. (P. 133). I am in complete agreement with these statements. Indeed, at the time of oral argument counsel representing the women guards who demand the right to make pat down searches of the genitals and anal areas of male prisoners conceded that if male prisoners have no right to object to such searches by female guards, it would follow that female prisoners would have no right to object to such searches by male guards. My point, however, is that these standards provide an ample and proper basis for a holding that to require male prisoners to be subjected to pat down searches of genital and anal areas by female guards except in emergencies, is contrary to the provisions of ORS 421.245 and 421.484, which requires that prisoners shall be treated in a reasonable and humane manner. Cf. Gunther v. Iowa State Men's Reform., 612 F.2d 1079 (8th Cir.1980) cert. den. 446 U.S. 966, 100 S.Ct. 2942, 64 L.Ed.2d 825 (1980), also cited by the majority. (Pp. 134-135). Such a basis for decision would leave the subject of what is reasonable and humane treatment within the control of the Oregon Legislature, subject only to constitutional limitations.