Strip Searching: Baring the Kinky Side of Officialdom

(Adapted from The Phantom Speaks blog 12/5/12)

What is fascism?  Wikipedia, political science professors, may all have their definitions, but for the my money, it is a form of government which places the highest priority on authority, order and control. One might also mix in, it allows for a certain kinky variant of sadism, voyeurism and outright state sanctioned groping.

In the opinions written by the Supreme Court in Florence vs the Board of Freeholders, the four liberal justices  joined an opinion written by Justice Breyer, who noted that American citizens arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, driving with a faulty headlight, failure to use a turn signal, riding a bicycle without an audible bell, violation of dog leash law have been strip searched, not just by some wayward deviant police officer, but systematically, in jails.

What is a strip search?  You are required, if you are a male, to strip naked, to lift your scrotum, to squat down and cough, to expel the switchblade knife or dirty bomb you may have concealed in your rectum, all this after an officer has examined your ears nose mouth hair scalp fingers hands arms armpits and other body openings.  Then you get a shower with a delousing agent. If you are transferred to another jail, you undergo the whole process all over again. The ACLU shows a video of a strip search in prison, to which prisoners are subjected after every visit from a relative, after work details, for a wide variety of activities. Watching this is an odd experience, because the woman being searched is apparently some sort of police officer who is volunteering for this "instructional video." This adds a certain bizarre tinge to the viewing experience.

A quick google search under "strip searching in jails" or "strip searching in prisons" yields videos which expose the psychological underpinnings of strip searching.  You can see that the various probings, ogling, visualization of spread labia, spread fingers can add nothing of any value to security in the jail, but it clearly contains some sort of personal turn on for the jailer. Any physician who has done physical exams can look at any of these videos and see there is no diagnostic value to most of what these policemen or jailers are doing. They are, simply and baldly put, aroused by what they are doing to their prisoners, if only from the sense of power they have over their victims. It is a training video in the psychopathology of sadism. 

It all brings to mind that character from "Boardwalk Empire," a federal prohibition enforcement agent who self flagellates after he has sex with prostitutes and he ogles a photograph of a woman he says he wants to save from hell fire. He has that same officious, censorious expression these jailers have--I am mistreating you because you've been bad. I'm going to spank you.

Justifying all this,  Justice Kennedy noted "People detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals." He noted newspaper articles about dangerous men who were stopped for minor traffic offenses; two turned out to be terrorists and one turned out to be a serial killer.

So now the Supreme Court of the United states justifies official abuse by an attitude of guilty and dangerous until proven innocent by rectal and vaginal exam. You never know when a serial killer is going to walk down the street with his dog off the leash, or ride a bicycle with an inaudible bell.

Justice Roberts, perhaps sensing this may be a slippery slope, goes off in another direction, saying that even if 99% of those arrested are not terrorists or serial killers, "Some detainees may have lice, which can easily spread to others in the facility, and some detainees may have diseases or injuries for which the jail is required to provide medical treatment."

So now Justice Roberts says the strip search is for the arrested citizen's own benefit, to diagnose and treat occult illness, infestation, infection and smelly armpits.

And never mind the point if you are going to force a delousing agent and a shower on a person, you don't need to examine that patient for lice: You have already decided to treat. Finding lice would not change your treatment. It might titillate you, however.

As Maud has noted, this is like saying the Inquisition's rack was just an archaic version of a Pilates exercise--a little stretch is good for you.

If patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels, then assertions of health benefits must be the refuge of the guilty conscience.

The fiscal cliff is a theoretical problem.  Working the kinks out of Obamacare is an important task.  But reasserting the primacy of freedom from abuse by own government has to be obvious to anyone who has the guts to confront this reality.

Every news conference with every public official from mayor to US Senator to President ought to begin with a question about what these officials are going to do to reverse this single decision to destroy the trust in government of the average citizen.

Remember, the first thing they did in the concentration camps in Poland and in Germany was to strip naked the people getting off the trains.   And then, they sent them to the "showers."  

I always asked, "How could these people have gone to the showers, like sheep?"
I might ask the same thing of Americans today.

Here is a link to a youtube video. I'm not sure whether or not this is a real policeman "examining" a real prisoner, or whether this is simply some youtuber's fantasy about what it might be like to be in the position of the policeman. Either way, it graphically illustrates the 800 pound gorilla in the room none of the justices or jailers are willing to talk about: These "searches," by their nature, have a sexual content and that over rides any security value they may offer. But looking at the policeman,  demanding the woman spread her fingers, one is struck by how uninformative this exam is--it is simply an exercise in "I am in total control of you."  I mean, what is he looking for between her fingers? 

Here are two links which might work.  If not, you can google your own.
The first is simply the jailer and his pouting prey, instructive for how obvious the charade is in his "examination."
The second is the ACLU clip, with what I think is a prison guard demonstrating the proper technique for a strip search as she spreads her own labia, squats, bends over.
The real question is: Would you want your daughter in the hands of either of these two characters?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvPf8cPitHc

http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights-womens-rights/prison-strip-search-sexually-abusive