{"id":4685,"date":"2011-01-11T16:11:13","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T07:51:38","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T07:51:38","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=4685","title":{"rendered":"CA3: Follows CA9 and CA11 to broaden jail strip searches"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Third Circuit follows the Ninth and Eleventh and holds that a broader jail strip search policy is reasonable. Florence v. Bd. of Chosen Freeholders of Burlington<\/a>, 621 F.3d 296 (3d Cir. 2010):<\/p>\n

Since Bell [v. Wolfish]<\/a> was decided, ten circuit courts of appeals applied its balancing test and uniformly concluded that an arrestee charged with minor offenses may not be strip searched consistent with the Fourth Amendment unless the prison has reasonable suspicion that the arrestee is concealing a weapon or other contraband. Things changed in 2008, however, when the en banc Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed its prior precedent and held that a jail’s blanket policy of strip searching all arrestees upon entering the facility was reasonable even in the absence of individualized suspicion. Powell v. Barrett<\/a>, 541 F.3d 1298, 1314 (11th Cir. 2008) (en banc). A year later, the en banc Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit also reversed its prior precedent and upheld a blanket policy of strip searching all arrestees before they enter San Francisco’s general jail population. Bull v. City and County of San Francisco<\/a>, 595 F.3d 964, 975 (9th Cir. 2010) (en banc).<\/p>\n

Confronted with a clear dichotomy between the en banc decisions of the Ninth and Eleventh Circuits on the one hand and the numerous cases that preceded them on the other, we must determine which line of cases is more faithful to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like the Ninth and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals, we conclude that the security interest in preventing smuggling at the time of intake is as strong as the interest in preventing smuggling after the contact visits at issue in Bell. We reject Plaintiffs’ argument that blanket searches are unreasonable because jails have little interest in strip searching arrestees charged with non-indictable offenses. This argument cannot be squared with the facts and law of Bell. First, the Bell court explicitly rejected any distinction in security risk based on the reason for detention. Bell<\/a>, 441 U.S. at 546 n.28 (“There is no basis for concluding that pretrial detainees pose any lesser security risk than convicted inmates.”). Instead, the security risk was defined by the fact of detention in a correctional facility. See also, Fuentes v. Wagner, 206 F.3d 335, 347 (3d Cir. 2000) (“[I]t is impractical to draw a line between convicted prisoners and pretrial detainees for the purpose of maintaining jail security.” (citation omitted)).<\/p>\n

Second, Bell<\/a> did not require individualized suspicion for each inmate searched; it assessed the facial constitutionality of the policy as a whole, as applied to all inmates at MCC. Bell<\/a>, 441 U.S. at 560 (bypassing concerns regarding abuses during particular searches to uphold policy as a whole, stating: “we deal here with the question whether visual body-cavity inspections as contemplated by the MCC rules can ever be conducted on less than probable cause. Balancing the significant and legitimate security interests of the institution against the privacy interests of the inmates, we conclude that they can.”). MCC housed pretrial detainees, convicted inmates, and even non-offenders held as material witnesses, all of whom were included in the plaintiff class. See Bell, 441 U.S. at 524.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In sum, balancing the Jails’ security interests at the time of intake before arrestees enter the general population against the privacy interests of the inmates, we hold that the strip search procedures described by the District Court at BCJ and ECCF are reasonable. Accordingly, we will reverse the District Court’s grant of summary judgment on Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment strip search claim and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

FYI, three days ago in my local media<\/a>, a newly admitted inmate at my county jail was found with a gun after other inmates complained. He was admitted to Gen Pop, apparently without a strip search.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}