Court Opinion

ID: 9470805
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:16:30.857065+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:06.850401
License: Public Domain

BREYER, Circuit Judge.
The appellant, Paulo Arruda, is an inmate in a special maximum security unit within MCI-Walpole, a Massachusetts maximum security prison. He challenges the prison’s policy of strip-searching inmates of the security unit in two particular instances: when they enter or leave the unit on their way to or from the prison law library and infirmary, and after they receive visitors in the unit’s visiting rooms. After conducting an extensive hearing where the conditions at the prison were explored in detail, the district court, 547 F.Supp. 1324, held that the searches in question did not violate the Fourth or Eighth Amendments and did not deprive Arruda of his constitutionally protected access to the courts. We find no error.
The Supreme Court’s opinion in Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979), governs our approach to this appeal. In Wolfish, the Supreme Court assumed — and we have held, see United States v. Chamorro, 687 F.2d 1, 4 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 103 S.Ct. 462, 74 L.Ed.2d 613 (1982) — that prison inmates retain some measure of Fourth Amendment rights. The Court stated that the ultimate *887Fourth Amendment question is whether a prison search policy is “reasonable” under the circumstances. The Court wrote that to answer this question requires a balancing of interests; courts “must consider the scope of the particular intrusion, the manner in which it was conducted, the justification for initiating it, and the place in which it was conducted.” 441 U.S. at 559, 99 S.Ct. at 1884. The Court indicated that a court engaged in this balancing must evaluate “prison practice ... in light of the central objective of prison administration, safeguarding institutional security,” and that “[pjrison administrators ... should be accorded wide-ranging deference in the adoption and execution of policies and practices that in their judgment are needed to preserve internal order and discipline and to maintain institutional security.” Id. at 547, 99 S.Ct. at 1878. The Court specifically upheld as constitutional a prison strip search policy that required all inmates “to expose their body cavities for visual inspection ... after every contact visit with a person from outside the institution.” Id. at 558, 99 S.Ct. at 1884. In so doing, it reversed decisions by a federal district court and a court of appeals to the contrary. Since Wolfish, most lower courts have also upheld the validity of prison strip searches, see, e.g., United States v. York, 578 F.2d 1036 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 1005, 99 S.Ct. 619, 58 L.Ed.2d 682 (1978); United States v. Lilly, 576 F.2d 1240 (5th Cir.1978); Brown v. Hilton, 492 F.Supp. 771 (D.N.J.1980); Lee v. Downs, 470 F.Supp. 188 (E.D.Va.1979), although a few have not, see Frazier v. Ward, 528 F.Supp. 80 (N.D.N.Y.1982); Sims v. Brierton, 500 F.Supp. 813 (N.D.Ill.1980); Hodges v. Klein, 412 F.Supp. 896 (D.N.J.1976).
We recognize, as have all courts that have considered the issue, the severe if not gross interference with a person’s privacy that occurs when guards conduct a visual inspection of body cavities. This practice “instinctively” gave the Supreme Court “the most pause” in Wolfish, 441 U.S. at 558, 99 S.Ct. at 1884, and understandably so. However, there is nothing in the record here that indicates that the strip searches were conducted in a more intrusive or demeaning fashion than those in Wolfish. If there are any constitutionally significant differences between this case and Wolfish, they lie on the other side of the balance, in the relative security needs of the institutions. And it is here that Wolfish cautions us to be most hesitant to overturn prison administrators’ good faith judgments.
Admittedly, there are characteristics of this case that reasonably allow Arruda to argue that we .should distinguish it from Wolfish in terms of security needs. For one thing, the. prisoners in Wolfish were searched on their return from a visitors’ room where prisoners and visitors, although observed by a guard throughout the visit, were not separated by a screen. Here, the visiting rooms are divided by a wire security screen. For another thing, unlike Wolfish, the prisoners here are searched on their way from their cells to the prison library and infirmary, as well as on their return, despite the fact that guards accompany them on these visits. There are other, less important distinctions as well.
Nonetheless, there are other facts about this case that suggest that these searches are more, not less, reasonable than those in Wolfish. First, MCI-Walpole itself is a maximum security facility, the only such institution in Massachusetts, designed to hold those inmates who pose the greatest risks to society and to each other. In 1982, 76 percent of its inmates were confined for crimes against the person; 55 percent had six or more prior charges for such crimes; and 83 percent were serving maximum sentences of more than 10 years. The New York prison in Wolfish was not such a place. Second, the special security area, known as the DSU or Block 10, is a “prison within a prison,” designed to hold the most dangerous inmates — those “whose continued retention in the general institution population is detrimental to the program of the institution.” Mass.Gen.Laws ch. 127, § 39. Arruda was confined to the DSU for assaulting a prisoner. The strip searches in Wolfish were not restricted to particularly dangerous prisoners; they were made of *888ordinary inmates, including pretrial detainees — persons who had not yet even been convicted of a crime. Third, the record here bears out a lengthy history of prison contraband problems, including prisoner possession of both drugs and weapons. Ar-ruda testified that while he was a member of the general prison population, he himself possessed drugs and a weapon. Fourth, the record suggests that in at least eight instances, guards themselves were found to have been involved in smuggling contraband, including drugs, to prisoners. Those who were caught were dismissed, but the contraband problem continues. The opinions of the several courts in Wolfish are silent on this score.
Finally, unlike the Supreme Court in Wolfish, we have before us a lower court decision, made after a hearing, in which the court found that the strip search policy was reasonable under the circumstances. Having reviewed the record we find the district court within its rights in concluding the following. First, the prison administrators could reasonably believe that without strip searches they would face a risk of more contraband in the hands of their most dangerous prisoners. Despite screens in the visiting rooms, contraband could still be passed through the screens; despite the presence of guards, a prisoner might obtain contraband from another person at the library or in the infirmary. The closest question in our minds is whether there is a need to search the prisoners when they leave their cells on the way to the library or infirmary. Yet, given the problem of prison employee involvement with contraband, the district court’s conclusion is not unreasonable: Despite the prisoner’s relative isolation, someone, such as an untrustworthy prison employee, might place contraband in a cell at night for the prisoner to pass to others on his next library or infirmary visit. Second, while alternative methods of dealing with the contraband problem may exist, such as totally screening off visitors, more thoroughly searching the visitors themselves, and further restricting trips by prisoners to areas outside the DSU, each such alternative has significant costs of its own in terms of both privacy and other significant interests. And, the record reveals that the prison authorities took alternatives and their costs into account.
Under these circumstances, we do not believe that the factual distinctions to which Arruda points are sufficient to allow us to depart from the Supreme Court’s result. The injury to privacy interests is virtually identical; the “security needs” justification, in our view, is equally plausible. We have reviewed the record recognizing our obligation to overturn factually based conclusions only when “clearly erroneous,” Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a), and our obligation to apply the precedent of Wolfish and the principles it sets forth. Applying these standards, we find no basis for reversal on the Fourth Amendment claim. And the standards imposed by the Eighth Amendment (“cruel and unusual punishment”) are no more lenient. The record does not reveal any separate or sufficient basis for overturning the district court’s rejection of the “right of judicial access” claim. The decision of the district court is therefore

Affirmed.