“The Department of Corrections will say that strip-searches are about safety and security,” says Terri Ricks, “but ... it was really about power and control." Ricks is now an ACLU of Connecticut Smart Justice leader. But before then, while incarcerated, she faced a sickening dilemma.
Like most Black incarcerated women, Ricks had survived rape before prison. The strip searches she underwent every time loved ones visited were “torture,” bringing back the memories and the trauma. After six months, Ricks made a heartbreaking request: that her family stop visiting her.
The ACLU is still fighting strip searches, demanding footage of J’Allen Jones, killed by prison officers after refusing a search. Testimonies like Ricks’ expose officers for smuggling contraband despite both evading searches and refusing to rationalize them. Statistically speaking, reducing strip searches does not increase prison contraband. Technology like body scanners is more effective. But prisons prioritize humiliation over safety, injury over reform.
This violence first degraded the enslaved, whose descendants are disproportionately incarcerated. Torn from home and family. Undressed and examined. Greased for sale. “Watching a strip search is like watching a slave auction,” says counselor Kevnesha Boyd, who was so traumatized by the dehumanization she saw that she resigned her position with the Connecticut Department of Correction. In the 1930s, Harriet Hill still remembered being auctioned off. “I could never forget it.”
Strip searches, past and present, infiltrate our memory, inflicting fear and subjugation through “necessary” repetition. But the searches aren’t necessary. Our humanity is.