(CN) - A divided Supreme Court on Monday upheld blanket strip-search policies that are enforced against all jail inmates, regardless of the charge they face.
A successful challenge would rely on substantial evidence that the policies are an unnecessary or unjustified response to problems of jail security, but Albert Florence simply failed to make that case, according to the majority opinion.
After Florence had been one week late paying an installment in the fine he owed for a previous charge, a New Jersey judge issued a warrant for his arrest.
Florence made the payment in question a week later, but New Jersey updated his profile on a statewide database.
Two years later, a state trooper pulled Florence over and arrested him for the outstanding civil contempt warrant.
The Burlington County Detention Center subjected Florence to a strip search and visual body-cavity search, and Florence underwent another search when the jail transferred him to a facility in Essex County.
One day after the second search, the charges against Florence were dismissed. He then filed a federal class action against both jails and several other defendants for constitutional violations.
A federal judge granted summary judgment on Florence's unlawful search claim, but declined to grant an injunction and denied the defendants' immunity claims.
The 3rd Circuit reversed, however, with the majority concluding that a jail's security interests outweigh the privacy interests of detainees who ordinarily would not be suspected of concealing contraband.
Though the 9th and 11th Circuits have made similar findings, the high court took up Florence's appeal to settle circuit conflict.
The decision notes that 13 million inmates are jailed, "in the stricter sense of the term, excluding prison facilities," every year, and the largest facilities process hundreds of people every day.
The justices also gave statistics about contraband in all of its forms, pointing out that correctional officers have recovered weapons like knives and glass chards in the body cavities of prisoners. They also uncover heroin and other drugs. Since an inmate could fashion a weapon out of a pen, nothing can be overlooked.
"The question here is whether undoubted security imperatives involved in jail supervision override the assertion that some detainees must be exempt from the more invasive search procedures at issue absent reasonable suspicion of a concealed weapon or other contraband," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. "The court has held that deference must be given to the officials in charge of the jail unless there is 'substantial evidence' demonstrating their response to the situation is exaggerated. Petitioner has not met this standard, and the record provides full justifications for the procedures used."
It would be "unworkable" for jails to offer search exemptions for new detainees who face less serious charges, the system for which Florence argued, according to the court.
"The record provides evidence that the seriousness of an offense is a poor predictor of who has contraband and that it would be difficult in practice to determine whether individual detainees fall within the proposed exemption," Florence wrote.
"People detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals."
Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, for example was arrested after the tragic attack for driving without a license plate.
