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If prisons were serious about controlling the flow of drugs and weapons into prisons, they would strip-search prison employees. Strip-searching prisoners has little to nothing to do with security concerns. Strip-searching has to do with dehumanizing the incarcerated. Barbara Deming, author and civil rights activist, after being strip-searched wrote, “They wouldn’t be able to admit it to themselves, but their search, of course, is for something else, and is efficient: their search is for our pride” (Prison Notes).
I served a six-month sentence during which I was strip-searched many times. Once I was strip-searched at 6 AM, shackled (hands to a chain around my waist, and ankle to ankle), and put on a “con air” flight to be transported to another prison. Severe thunderstorms prevented the plane from landing and resulted in me being returned late at night to the detention center I started out from, to the same shift that had seen me off. I had spent the day unable to scratch my nose, let alone unzip my pants, and the prison guards wanted to strip-search me. Despite being exhausted and in desperate need of a bathroom, I abandoned both my inclination to obey persons in power and my fear of being subjected to a forced strip search and refused. I rejected the idea that this was about reasonable security concerns and recognized the strip search for what it was and is–a weapon used in prisons and jails everywhere to dehumanize.
