Strip Searches (eewww...)

Naked. Intimate. Complicated for everyone involved! Let's have a talk about strip searches and the impact they have on residents AND staff, shall we? Does that thought make you uncomfortable? Face your fears and join Sabrina for this important topic.

Time Markers:

2:00 Let’s Get Naked

2:55 Appreciation for Hospitals

5:40 Prison…appreciation???

8:00 Not as Clear Cut as we Want it to be

8:55 Our Expectations for Released Prisoners

9:57 Our Weird Attitude Toward Corrections STAFF

11:55 The “Other” Branch of Law Enforcement

13:55 Back to the Hospitals/Prisons Framework

15:30 “Strip Searches” in Medical Settings

17:00 Trauma for Incarcerated Individuals

19:00 How’s All of This Making the COs feel, btw?

21:58 When a CO Has to Strip Search Someone Who Has Caused Trouble

22:59 What’s the Answer…Technology?

26:00 Have That Awkward Conversation

Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT:
 We've Come A Long Way (No Vocal Version)
 Exzel Music Publishing (freemusicpublicdomain.com)
 Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

Welcome to the PrisonCare Podcast!

I’m Sabrina Justison, founder of PrisonCare.org, equipping compassionate people to support the often-invisible people groups who make up a prison neighborhood - the inmate residents, correctional officers, staff, administration, and the families of all of these folks. 

Join me for this week’s episode, and be encouraged to think, care, and respond as we explore the challenges facing prison neighborhoods everywhere. 

Let’s support positive prison culture from the outside, because EVERYone on the inside matters. 

http://prisoncare.org/community.html

Learn more about PrisonCare, Inc. and donate to our work

Time Markers:

2:00 Let’s Get Naked

2:55 Appreciation for Hospitals

5:40 Prison…appreciation???

8:00 Not as Clear Cut as we Want it to be

8:55 Our Expectations for Released Prisoners

9:57 Our Weird Attitude Toward Corrections STAFF

11:55 The “Other” Branch of Law Enforcement

13:55 Back to the Hospitals/Prisons Framework

15:30 “Strip Searches” in Medical Settings

17:00 Trauma for Incarcerated Individuals

19:00 How’s All of This Making the COs feel, btw?

21:58 When a CO Has to Strip Search Someone Who Has Caused Trouble

22:59 What’s the Answer…Technology?

26:00 Have That Awkward Conversation

Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT:
 We've Come A Long Way (No Vocal Version)
 Exzel Music Publishing (freemusicpublicdomain.com)
 Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Hello, friends. This is Sabrina and today we're going to get very personal. Very, very personal, because we're going to talk about strip searches and rapport inside a prison neighborhood.  

Do you spend a lot of time thinking about strip searches? I mean, I don’t. I don't think most of us do, because it's not a part of most of our worlds, right? But inside a prison neighborhood, the strip searches are part of everybody's world, every day. And I think it's worth exploring what that means to a prison neighborhood. What it means to people wearing any kind of uniform inside a prison neighborhood.  

So first of all, if you have not had a loved one who was incarcerated, if you have not really looked into this idea of strip searches, if you don't really know how it goes down in a prison: real simply, there are lots and lots and lots of strip searches. Before someone goes from one area of the prison where they normally are housed and work, and they go into a completely different area for a meeting, or a class, for whatever, they’re strip-searched.

(2:00) Before they go for a visit with loved ones in the visitation area, they are strip-searched. When they leave at the end of the visit to go back into their housing unit, they’re strip-searched. Anybody who is incarcerated will tell you that you have to get used to getting naked in front of a lot of people, because you just have to keep doing it.   

So I think we'll start with the obvious. I think that it is not a stretch for any of us to try to imagine that is difficult to be an incarcerated person and to have to take your clothes off in front of strangers, regularly. I mean, that's just not really how we're wired, right? That's not how our society, does it. 

(2:55) Even within the medical community, you know? From time to time, I like, to compare society’s relationship with prisons to society’s relationship with hospitals, right? If this is unfamiliar to you, let me just go over it real quickly, because it is important. It's an important piece of prison carers perspective on Prison neighborhoods, okay? 

So Society needs hospitals, right? We have people who are sick. We have people who are injured. We have people who need surgery. They need someplace to go; we need hospitals.

And in order to have hospitals, we need staff who are trained, and who run those hospitals, and who work long hours. And who have all kinds of specialized training, and who have to do tasks that most of us don't do on a daily basis. Okay? If you are not a doctor, and you're doing a lot of brain surgery, you probably need to stop doing that, right? Okay. So specialized skill sets, people doing things that we don't actually have a whole lot of familiarity with. 

Now, a lot of us have been in the hospital as a patient, at least for a short stay. Some of us have been in for a long stay, and we know that it is not fun. Nobody gets excited when they find out that they're going to have to go to the hospital, right?   But we don't typically judge people for needing to go to the hospital, right? 

And that sounds stupid. Of course, I'm not going to judge somebody whose gallbladder is inflamed because they need to go in and have gallbladder surgery. Of course, I'm not going to judge someone who needs their tonsils out, okay? But what about the people who are in the hospital because they've taken very, very poor care of themselves, and their diet and their exercise have not been in line with a healthy lifestyle, and they have had unmanaged diabetes for years, and they're in the hospital because of complications from not taking care of themselves for years. Do we judge those people?

Or, how about the people who have a substance abuse problem, an addiction to something, and they are in the hospital because of complications from their addiction? Okay, maybe we judge them a little bit. That's one place where society will be a little a little harder on people. But even there, we recognize that addiction is a disease. Took us a few decades to realize that, but we recognize, that addiction is a disease. We recognize that there are complications that come from addiction that no addict ever intends to introduce into his or her life. And so there's a fair amount of compassion for the things that come along with even the complications of substance abuse.  

(5:40) All right. Now let's hold the prison up side by side with the hospital. So, societies need prisons — at least the way our society is at this moment in history, okay? I don't want the abolitionists who are listening to get all upset and say, “No, they don’t. No, we don't need it.” I'm saying that this is the reality of where we are right now, when I'm recording this early in 2023.

So, because society has mandated, that we must have prisons, we must have people who run the prisons. We must have staff who are trained, and who work long hours, and who do all the things that have to be done for the prison to run. 

And we have people who are incarcerated, who are serving prison sentences, and they are dwelling inside the prison facility. The big difference here, is that we have very little grace for the prison residents. The inmates. The incarcerated individuals. We are very judgy. We say, “Well, if you did the crime, you should do the time.” 

We don't recognize how almost all of us have done something at some point that could have landed us in prison. We were at a party. We had a little too much to drink. We drove home anyway, and nothing happened. We didn't hit and kill an eight-year-old on a bicycle,  but you know that there are people who are in prison because of that very scenario, and they just did happen to hit someone? 

We think about, you know, habitual offenders, right? Who are in and out because of drugs, and theft, and assault, and all of these things. But we don't take the time to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who grows up in poverty, in a segment of culture that is filled with violence as a solution to problems, that is filled with an emphasis on survival of the fittest rather than on education, and social skills, and communication.

{ 8:00 }

And so with all of our privilege as we sit outside of that, when you say, “Well they just need to not run with gangs, and they just need to not get involved in the drug trade,” and it doesn't take a whole lot of reading and listening to the stories of other people before (if you are being honest with yourself at all) you have to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”   

It's not as clear cut, as we want it to be friends. It's not. So we judge the “patients” in the prison, right? They’re sent there for correction. It's called the Department of Corrections. There is supposed to be rehabilitation taking place inside the fence.  That's not all that different from people who are sick in body, who are admitted to a hospital, and who have to stay there for a certain amount of time until they become well again.

(8:55) We are incarcerating people with the expectation that, upon their release, they will be ready to be law-abiding, contributing members of society. They will turn their lives around, and they will not get into trouble again. So there needs to be something happening on the inside that is facilitating that process, right? That's the idea. Not sure it's happening, but that is the idea behind it.

And yet, even so, even though as a society, we for the most part believe, “Yeah. That's the idea of the Department of Corrections. It's a place for people who have been breaking the law and doing bad things to other people, it's a place for them to turn their lives around." Because 90-some percent of them are going to be released, and they're going to come back into our neighborhoods, and our towns, and our workplaces, and our shopping malls, and we expect them to not be a threat to society anymore when they come out, right? So they go in to be corrected, just like a patient goes into the hospital sick in the hopes that they will come out well.

{ 9:57 }

Now, the judgment that we typically have against incarcerated, people is not the only problem, because we also pass judgment against Corrections staff.  When we hear what doctors and nurses do all day long in a hospital, the amount of gross stuff that they're exposed to, you know, intestines and bile and brain fluid and blood and feces and urine…all of it. We say, if we're not in the medical field, if we're not wired for that, we say, “Wow, I'm really glad there's somebody doing it. I'm glad it's not me. But, you know, thank you for your service,” right? “Thank you for being an essential worker. Thank you for showing up during COVID. Thank you for masking up, and gloving up, and suiting up, and going in and doing the things that helped people get better when they were sick.” We respect them. We put signs up that say, you know, to show appreciation for your hospital staff, hug a nurse, you know, all of those kinds of things show so much respect for people in that helping profession. We recognize how much we need them as a society.   

But Corrections staff, for some reason, don't get the same kind of love and respect, even when compared to other people in law enforcement of other branches. There is a lot going on in our country right now around policing in general. And The PrisonCare Podcast and PrisonCare, Inc. are not interested in getting into that debate. That is not our spot; that's not where we live. If you're listening, you are certainly entitled to have all kinds of strong opinions about that. That's just not what we're doing at PrisonCare. Okay. So those conversations can happen elsewhere. 

(11:55) But even where you find Law Enforcement Officers respected and appreciated within a community, you almost never find Corrections involved in that.  We don't shine a spotlight on Corrections and say, “Thank you for what you're doing. It's a really hard job, and we need you, and we're so glad you're doing it, because we're not sure that we could handle it.”   

Corrections is the forgotten, ignored, "tuck it away somewhere, where I don't have to look at it,” branch of law enforcement. We don't really want to think about it and because of that position that Society has taken, we put prisons way outside of where we live, and shop, and work, if we possibly can, because we don't want to drive past the gates. We don't want to see the razor wire. 

Because of that, we have somehow shifted into an attitude of distrust of Corrections staff, an assumption that the only person who is working in Corrections is doing it because they like the idea of having power over someone else, and punishing them, and that they're surrounded by so much depravity all day long every day that, just like in the movies and the TV shows that we watch (that are not an accurate depiction of prison at all), just like in those things, Corrections staff are mostly probably corrupt. You know, they're probably being bribed. They're probably smuggling in contraband. They're probably abusive. They probably like to find the spots in the facility where the cameras don't pick up their activity, and they are horrible to people, just because they can be, right? We have a lot of assumptions, and most of them are negative when it comes to Corrections staff. 

(13:55) Okay, so prison — hospital, right? Both are called for. They’re mandated by society, as it is now in the United States. Both of them have people who are living there for a time. Both of them have staff that are running them. Both of them are there because we, as a society, have said, “We must have these. This has to happen. Somebody has to do it.” And yet, at the hospital we say, “Wow we feel so bad for the folks who are in there getting treatment and surgery, and it's tough. It’s…you can't sleep, you know. It's awful.” 

We feel for them, and we feel for the staff, the doctors and the nurses. We’re so appreciative, we have so much respect for them.  But in the prison, we assume that everyone who is serving a sentence there is scum, should have known better, and totally could have avoided whatever it was that landed them there. And we don't really know that we're comfortable hanging out with the staff, because, I mean, that's weird. Like, talk about a conversation killer at a cocktail party, tell somebody that you're a correctional officer, watch them go, like, “Oh my gosh, really?” Like, and they take a step back, and they're a little uneasy, because there's this weirdness.

(15:30) Okay, that was a lot of framework, but that's important framework. And we actually haven't talked about it on the podcast in quite a while, that parallel between hospitals and prisons, and it's important for helping us understand where we are now, and where we need to go.

Strip searches. Let's get back to strip searches. Let's get back to getting naked in front of a lot of people, if you're incarcerated. So in a hospital, you're subject to all kinds of indignities. Right? You're in a hospital gown. It's open down the back. You cannot tie those little strings tight enough to keep your butt from hanging out. Just can't be done. So if you have to walk down the hall, and you're holding an IV pole, you know that everybody can see your butt, and it's awful. If you can't get out of the bed, and you have to use a bed pan, or a bedside commode, or you have to be catheterized, these things are just…ugh, the indignity. It's just horrible. It's part of what people hate about having to be in the hospital, right? 

Even when you're just getting started, getting something checked out, and it's not as invasive as something like catheterization, or whatever? Like, who wants to go for their annual checkup, where if you're a guy, your prostate’s going to get checked, and if you're a woman, you're going to have to have your GYN checkup. I mean, we just don't like that stuff. Body cavities should be left alone. You know what I'm saying? 

Okay, so within prisons, we've kind of turned a blind eye to the fact that that kind of indignity is an absolutely standard part of your day in a prison, and it doesn't matter which uniform you're wearing. It is a violation to be strip searched, to have to bend over and spread your butt cheeks and cough, and lift up your sack, if you're a guy.   

(17:00) These things are not things that you can do and still feel human, and respected, and like an adult. They’re demeaning things. 

I'm not saying they're not necessary. Contraband is a huge problem in prisons, okay. This is not a question of whether anyone should ever be strip searched. This is a question of whether we have ever thought about what the strip search process is, and the incredible frequency of it, right? So many strip searches in the course of a week. What that does to a person's psyche.  

We want people who are incarcerated to be getting better. We want them to become more responsible. We want them to become more  purpose-driven, more in community, connected well relationally, communicating well with people. We want all of those things to happen.

But we are robbing them of dignity and demeaning them in a very physical, intimate, naked way.  Every day.

That's tall order. I think, most of us would feel the need for some professional counseling to help us come to terms with that. Right? Unfortunately, there's really not counseling available for people who are incarcerated, and certainly not if your primary problem is that the ongoing strip search process is giving you serious issues with your identity and your self-esteem, with the idea of consent, what can be touched and what cannot without your consent. All of those things that are big part of life on the outside. That is something that you just have to deal with it. Just have to get over it.  

(19:00) Now, let's look at the other set of uniforms. Let's look at the staff. It is the rare and twisted individual who gets a kick out of the strip searches that they do in the course of a day.    Corrections Officers are not, like, arm wrestling, each other to get the chance to do the next strip search. 

It's demeaning to them as well. Now, most of them cope with it by being really tough about it, by getting really cold, and convincing themselves, "This doesn't bother me. It's not a big deal, you know. It's just, it's just another part of the job, and I'm doing, I'm doing what I gotta do, right? And if they don't like it, and they squawk about it, well, they just need to shut up and, and cooperate, and get it done, right?” 

So most COs are having to just put on the tough face and get over it. Get over whatever they're feeling inside about the unpleasantness of getting this close, in this intimate of a fashion, with someone that they don't have an intimate relationship with. Have you ever thought about that? Until a few years ago, I certainly had not.     

COs don't generally like it that this is a regular part of their job, because they find that it strips away piece of their humanity. They would not put their hands on someone in the grocery store  without the consent of that person. They would not put their hands on a loved one in that way.         

Hands and eyes. Let me rephrase that just a little bit, because corrections officers, for the most part, are not having to do a lot of touching. If someone is cooperative with the strip search, primarily what they're having to do is look, okay? But how much in our society do we, do we teach, and do we expect that responsible, healthy adults will not be voyeuristic, will not look at things that are none of their business? 

We give each other privacy, right? We have bathroom stalls. I mean, even the urinals in the men's room, there's those little, tiny walls in between sometimes, you know, because it's just weird.  We have a sense of privacy, and decency, and dignity that we like to protect .COs have to look, and they have to look carefully, and they have to look carefully at people that they have no relationship with whatsoever.  

But they also have to look carefully at people that they have a fairly decent relationship with, people that they have seen carry themselves well, people that they've come to, if not trust, at least respect, because they're doing their time well, because they're taking responsibility, owning their life, and they're just not…yeah, they’re, they're doing it. They're doing it as best they can. And so there's there's a kind of respect there, but you still have to strip search them.

{ 21:58 }

And then there's the people that you can't stand. There's the people that are troublemakers. They're the people that, that throw feces and urine at staff when they're unhappy with something, that threaten. And you're telling me that it isn't a really tough ask for an officer to conduct a strip search on someone like that and not cross the line into unnecessary, abusive behavior? You've got them vulnerable. You've got them vulnerable, and yet you have to be the stand-up person. You’ve got to take the high road. You're going to do your job, look closely, but not make it worse than it has to be. Man! That's a lot of pressure. Man, that is demeaning for everyone involved.

{ 22:59 }

Maybe,  just maybe, we should think about it on the outside. Maybe it's not fair that, as a society, we are requiring two very large, groups of people — incarcerated individuals and Corrections staff — to do things that we have to admit are demeaning and dehumanizing. And maybe we should have to think about that, instead of just forgetting about it, ignoring it, and letting them deal with it, because it's their problem, not ours.  We've made it their problem. As a society, we have required, it.

Now, what's the answer? Jiminy Crickets! I don't know. And, you know, The PrisonCare Podcast is not about answers. It's about awareness and education, learning together. It's about considering things that we've been turning a blind eye toward, It's about taking some ownership as a society of the carceral industry that we have in this country. And so I'm not going to offer an answer. 

I would love to say, “Oh there's no reason for strip searches. We can do it another way." And you know what? There are all kinds of questions about technology, the technology that scans people at airports, and that scans people in hospitals, isn't there? Some way that some of that technology could be used to scan for contraband? I don't know. I don't know. Believe me, I am, like, the last person scientific enough to know whether those kinds of technologies would be effective in a prison. If not, I would really think that there's some really smart inventor person out there who could be tasked with finding a way to do this in a less demeaning and dehumanizing way.  

But again, I'm really not offering that as an answer because I have no idea what that would take. The problem is too big for me to solve, but what is not too big for me to do is to raise this question, to ask us, as compassionate people, people on the outside, to consider it.  To Simply look at something that we've ignored for a long time. And then to say, “Do I care about the people who are being stripped searched on a regular basis? Do I feel for them? Do I have compassion on them because that is dehumanizing? Do I care about the people who are conducting strip searches on a regular basis? Do I have compassion on them, because having to do that is extremely difficult. It's a big ask to have somebody do that, and do it with class and respect for everyone involved all day long. It's big ask."

(26:00) So, what can we do as compassionate people on the outside? What we always return to here on The PrisonCare Podcast is, “What is the response that we can choose, as compassionate people on the outside?" And I'm going to offer the very simplest response possible, which is: TALK ABOUT IT.   

Think about it, and talk about it. We need more conversation about the things that are a part of our Corrections industry that are not helping people thrive, that are not helping people become better and stronger and healthier, more productive, and loving, and wonderful members of society, right? There are things in the system that are making people worse and not better,  people in every kind of uniform. It's making them worse and not better. And we need to talk about it.  

So, I'm going to challenge you this week. Bring up the phrase “strip-search” with someone in a

conversation, and ask them if they've ever thought about strip searches in prisons, and what it's doing to people, and wonder out loud with someone about whether there isn't some way that we could come up with a different solution to the contraband problem in prisons. Just have a conversation. 

That's a big piece of what we're always asking for at PrisonCare, Inc., we’re asking people to have conversations. We're asking you to bring things out of the background, things that are just running, forgotten and ignored, in the background and to bring them out to the front and have a conversation about them. We are not going to find the answers to big questions like this if we're not talking about it, if we're not concerned about it, if we're not aware. So have those conversations. 

And if you want to do more than have a conversation, if you want to become a Penpal Encourager, if you want to become a financial supporter, if you want to help change the educational arc for the next generation of policy makers that are that are coming in the next decade or so, that are coming out of our universities in our criminal justice programs and our sociology programs in our Psychology programs, if you're interested in doing more, visit PrisonCare.org and check out the ideas for involvement there. 

There's a long list of organizations that we encourage you to learn more about, restorative justice organizations, and oh, golly, so much ,so much, lots of good stuff. And then there are also free PDF resources things that you can download to help you become a Penpal Encourager, to help you start a Compassion Team, to help you learn how to encourage a virtues based vocabulary when you are talking to people who are incarcerated, and to learn what the power of a virtues based vocabulary can be in the life of somebody who's incarcerated…so many ideas.

So many ideas. And I just encourage you to tune in to the next episode of The PrisonCare Podcast, too. We're going to keep talking about things that need to be talked about.  So thank you for being here for this conversation about strip searches, and thank you for caring.

Thanks for listening to The PrisonCare Podcast. Be sure to visit us at prisoncare.org.

PrisonCare: equipping compassionate people to support positive prison culture from the outside, because everyone on the inside matters.

http://prisoncare.org/community.html

Learn more about PrisonCare, Inc. and donate to our work

Time Markers:

2:00 Let’s Get Naked

2:55 Appreciation for Hospitals

5:40 Prison…appreciation???

8:00 Not as Clear Cut as we Want it to be

8:55 Our Expectations for Released Prisoners

9:57 Our Weird Attitude Toward Corrections STAFF

11:55 The “Other” Branch of Law Enforcement

13:55 Back to the Hospitals/Prisons Framework

15:30 “Strip Searches” in Medical Settings

17:00 Trauma for Incarcerated Individuals

19:00 How’s All of This Making the COs feel, btw?

21:58 When a CO Has to Strip Search Someone Who Has Caused Trouble

22:59 What’s the Answer…Technology?

26:00 Have That Awkward Conversation

Intro/Outro MUSIC CREDIT:
 We've Come A Long Way (No Vocal Version)
 Exzel Music Publishing (freemusicpublicdomain.com)
 Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/