> On a 5-4 vote, court says that it is just peachy to strip > search anyone before putting them in a jail cell even if > there is no cause to think that they have any contraband > and no matter how trivial the offense was.
Being that my primary work deals with the corrections industry and I have a lot of close contact with staff at several county jails, I do understand why the jails have these blanket policies. From what I've been told, inmates, their families, or their gangs will sometimes hire people to hide drugs on their person and then get arrested on purpose on some minor charge for the sole purpose of smuggling drugs and other items into the jail. Unfortunately our litigation-happy culture has made it nearly impossible for the jails to be subjective about nearly anything. Where common sense and on-the-fly judgement would make sense in the real world, they have to use blanket policies and procedures and "no exceptions" style rules to ward off lawsuits from the inmates. Where they were once able to pick and choose who to strip-search, they've been litigated into just making it standard practice for everyone being booked in. There is a safety aspect to it for the jail staff and contractors who have to work in their facilities, as well as a protection to prevent discrimination/harassment lawsuits from inmates who feel that they've been singled out for those kinds of searches (which, in theory, saves the taxpayers money on several fronts). -Justin ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:349348 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
