Court Opinion

ID: 9470806
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:16:30.860091+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:06.583884
License: Public Domain

MALETZ, Senior Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
To the extent the majority find routine strip searches permissible after visits with persons from outside the prison community, I agree. See Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 558-60, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 1884-85, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979). At the same time, however, I find strip searches routinely conducted before and after intraprison transfers constitutionally impermissible. I must, therefore, dissent from that portion of the majority’s opinion.
The most troubling aspect of this case is routine strip searches conducted before and after trips to the prison hospital and library. The bottom line rationale for strip searches in those instances appears to be based on the facility’s seeming inability to adequately control its own staff. Frankly, I am hard-pressed to see why this situation should inure to the detriment of the prison*889er. Such a justification for routine strip searches leaves prison authorities with virtually unlimited discretion in this field. It is a mere makeweight for explaining away any intrusion into a prisoner’s privacy interests, concededly limited though they may be.
I am mindful of the Supreme Court’s admonition in Wolfish that reviewing courts not “second-guess” prison administrators. Our sole inquiry is, rather, whether the practice or condition violates the Constitution. For there must be some limits to the level of deference a court is to accord prison administrators. Otherwise their discretion in this area would be nothing short of unbridled and we would be, at the same time, abnegating our supervisory responsibility. On this score, we are reminded that “convicted persons do not forfeit all constitutional protections by reason of their conviction and confinement in prison,” including the limited protection of the fourth amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches. Wolfish, 441 U.S. at 545, 558, 99 S.Ct. at 1879, 1884; 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).
In determining the lawfulness of a strip search — a practice which, as the majority correctly point out, “instinctively” gave the Supreme Court the “most pause” in Wolfish, 441 U.S. at 558, 99 S.Ct. at 1884 — the need for the particular search must be balanced against the invasion of personal rights that the search entails. To this end, “[cjourts must consider the scope of the particular intrusion, the manner in which it is conducted, the justification for it, and the place in which it is conducted.” Wolfish, 441 U.S. at 559, 99 S.Ct. at 1884.
First, as to the scope of the particular intrusion here, each and every time appellant leaves and returns to his cell, whether it be to see a visitor, to use the prison library, to exercise, or to visit the prison hospital — regardless of whether there is even a suspicion that he is concealing contraband — he is submitted to a visual strip search. Appellant is accompanied by two guards on each of these trips and is shackled both to and from his cell. As a Departmental Segregation Unit (DSU) resident appellant is not permitted to come into contact with other inmates. Only one DSU resident is released from his cell to the cell corridor at any one time.
The strip search is not conducted in private, but provided appellant cooperates by following the strip search procedures, there is no physical contact between appellant and the guards during the course of the strip search.
The justification for the strip search appears to be premised in large part on the place in which it is conducted. Given that the MCI-Walpole facility has a violent prisoner population, and that the DSU houses the most violent of these prisoners, the state submits that security considerations necessitate the strip search policy employed here. While conceding that inmates housed in the DSU are under the tightest security, the state contends that opportunities for receipt of contraband still exist through the guards. The facility apparently has had a history of being unable to control them in this regard.
I do not dispute that MCI-Walpole has had a history of violence, and that the introduction of contraband has been a major problem. Nevertheless, the district court found that visitors are the major source of contraband at MCI-Walpole. While this finding would support routine strip searches in the visitor context, it totally fails to answer the question why routine strip searches should be tolerated in other settings. Therefore, to the extent that the state cites its incorrigible guards as the justification for all other strip searches, this seems no rationale at all here. Hurley v. Ward, 549 F.Supp. 174, 186 (S.D.N.Y.1982).1
Against this background, balancing the security interests of the institution in con*890ducting routine visual strip searches of appellant against the serious intrusion on his privacy interests occasioned by such a search, I am constrained to conclude that routine visual strip searches before and after visits to the prison library and prison hospital are unreasonable, absent some level of cause, such as reasonable suspicion, see Wolfish, 441 U.S. at 563, 99 S.Ct. at 1886 (Powell, J., dissenting), or a “clear indication” that contraband is being secreted on an inmate’s person. See Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 769-70, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 1835-36, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966).
In this regard I feel that the majority’s opinion in Wolfish is distinguishable. There, the Court noted that the searches were conducted after contact visits that apparently were not closely monitored by prison officials. The searches were thus, in the Court’s judgment, necessary to check the introduction of contraband into the MCC. Id. at 559, 99 S.Ct. at 1884. The Wolfish holding is therefore not controlling with respect to internal prison searches that serve only to detect the circulation of contraband that has already been introduced into the facility. Moreover, Wolfish did not foreclose possible constitutional limitations on the power of prison officials to conduct body searches.
I believe that the border search cases provide a useful analytical framework for prison searches. The sliding scale of reasonableness adopted in the border search area shows that there exists a middle ground between, on the one hand, saddling the government with an unrealistically high standard of proof, such as probable cause, and, on the other, allowing officials unfettered discretion to conduct this type of surveillance. Like prison searches, customs inspections implicate very powerful government interests in the detection of contraband and may entail significant intrusion into the privacy rights of the individual searched. While there are, of course, differences between the two situations that preclude a wholesale transposition of standards, it is at least possible to look to border search cases for guidance in evaluating prison searches. See Note, Constitutional Limitations on Body Searches in Prison, 82 Co-lum.L.Rev. 1033, 1048-49 (1982).
Instructive in this connection is Hodges v. Klein, 412 F.Supp. 896 (D.N.J.1976). While upholding strip searches following visits with friends and relatives in order to prevent the introduction of contraband into the prison community, the court found unreasonable routine strip searches following the movement of an inmate within the institution:
To the extent that the state’s interest in controlling intra-prison transfer of contraband justifies an anal examination ..., the court concludes that the residuum of Fourth Amendment protection through which a prisoner retains an interest in privacy prevents the imposition of this degrading and humiliating search
Id. at 902. Analogizing the role of the prison guard with that of the customs officer, the court in Hodges, relying on border search cases, concluded that the state cannot conduct a visual anal search of an inmate “unless there is a reasonably clear indication or suggestion that the inmate is concealing something in his anal cavity.” Id. at 903.
In analyzing the adequacy of the state’s justification for strip searches here, the state’s interest in preventing the influx of contraband in prison cannot be gainsaid. On this score strip searches following visits with friends, relatives or attorneys are justified on balance. Government security interests are strongest with respect to those searches aimed at preventing contraband from getting into the prison. See Hurley v. Ward, 584 F.2d 609, 611 (2d Cir.1978).2 Contraband that is successfully smuggled past the prison threshold may be used or consumed almost immediately thereafter. The point-of-entry search may thus offer *891officials their only opportunity to detect certain contraband and prevent its use.
By contrast, internal searches conducted to curtail the circulation of contraband within a prison implicate far less compelling security interests than do point-of-entry searches. With internal searches, prison authorities do not block the introduction of contraband — they merely deter and detect its circulation. When one of the primary justifications for strip searches in these circumstances rests on the institution’s inability to control its own staff the scales tip decidedly in favor of the inmate. Given the extremely tight security placed around a DSU inmate generally and especially during his visits to and from the prison library and hospital, routine strip searches in those two situations would appear to violate the fourth amendment, absent some individualizing indicia of suspicion. Hurley v. Ward, 584 F.2d at 611 (routine strip search of inmate who was “heavily shackled and under close and constant guard during the few excursions from his segregated cell” was unnecessary and unjustified); Hodges v. Klein, supra. See also Logan v. Shealy, 660 F.2d 1007 (4th Cir.1981), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 942, 102 S.Ct. 1435, 71 L.Ed.2d 653 (1982); Tinetti v. Wittke, 620 F.2d 160 (7th Cir.1980).
Accordingly, I concur in the majority’s opinion to the extent it upholds the practice of routine strip searches of DSU inmates following visits with persons from outside the facility. In all other respects, I respectfully dissent.

. The district court found that some contraband had been brought into the institution by staff. Significantly, however, strip searches of DSU inmates are not required after they have had staff contacts.

. This assumes, of course, that prison staff are not the source of contraband, an institutional problem which, as previously indicated, cannot be proffered as an acceptable justification for routinely subjecting inmates to strip searches.