Cal.2d: No reasonable expectation of privacy in jail visitation lobby locker

Defendant was arrested for taking a picture in the jail lobby which had a sign saying no cameras in the jail property. A search incident to that arrest produced two jail locker keys, and the lockers were searched finding methamphetamine in personal belongings. The searches of the lockers were valid as a jail administrative entry-type search, and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in the jail’s visitation room lockers. People v. Boulter, 199 Cal. App. 4th 761, 131 Cal. Rptr. 3d 185 (2d Dist. 2011):

Because of the nature of a jail or prison, a visitor to those institutions should have a reduced expectancy of privacy. As noted by one court, “the searches with which we are here concerned are not taking place in airports or on public streets, but on the premises of a maximum security prison. As the United States Supreme Court has recognized, ‘central to all other corrections goals is the institutional consideration of internal security within the corrections facilities themselves.’ [Citation.]” (Estes v. Rowland, supra, 14 Cal.App.4th at p. 537.) “Because of the character of prisoners and the nature of imprisonment, corrections facilities are volatile places, brimming with peril, places where security is not just an operational nicety but a matter of life or death importance. [Citation.] That is why the Supreme Court has decided that even when a prison restriction or practice ‘infringes a specific constitutional guarantee, … the practice must be evaluated in the light of the central objective of prison administration, safeguarding institutional security.’ [Citation.] [¶] … ‘That which would be unreasonable in the outside world may be indispensable within a prison.’ [Citation.] … ‘Prison authorities have both the right and the duty by all reasonable means to see to it that visitors are not smuggling weapons or other objects which could be used in an effort to escape or to harm other prisoners.’ [Citation.]” (United States v. Prevo (11th Cir. 2006) 435 F.3d 1343, 1346.) As a result of the obvious need for a jail to maintain security defendant was presumed to know that upon entering jail property he and his belongings were subject to search, and therefore he implicitly consented to the search or had a reduced expectation of privacy.

Defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to possessions he placed in a locker on the jail property. Although law enforcement employees and jail employees are differently situated than jail visitors, cases holding that searches of the employees’ lockers were proper suggest that others who store goods in lockers on jail property should have no expectation of privacy with respect to those lockers.