STRIP-SEARCH RULING FORCES BIG CHANGES

For half a century, deputies at the Sacramento County jail have
routinely ordered inmates to take off their clothing and submit to a
visual body cavity search, a procedure tacitly approved by the state's
Board of Corrections.

Similar searches happen every day in California jails. So officials
weren't worried when former inmates filed a class-action suit two
years ago in Sacramento Superior Court, contending that group searches
of people arrested for nonviolent misdemeanors were illegal. County
officials were stunned when a judge ruled against them.

"When a state watchdog agency gives you a thumbs up, and you're doing
what everybody else in the state is doing, there's no reason to
believe you're doing anything wrong," said sheriff's Capt. David Lind,
who oversees the jail.

Sacramento's high-profile loss has rattled jail officials across the
state who now are engaged in a debate over the balance between jail
security and inmates' rights. Last month, jail commanders met in
Fresno to review state law, which says strip-searches can be done on
people arrested for misdemeanors only if there is "reasonable
suspicion" that they are smuggling contraband.

At a conference of the California Peace Officers Association in
Monterey, the group's general counsel, Martin J. Mayer, told officials
to review their policies.

The judgment against Sacramento is not the only notable strip-search
case this year. Los Angeles County supervisors settled a case this
spring, and a pending suit against the city of San Francisco alleges a
woman was forcibly strip-searched when she refused to submit
voluntarily.

"It's a hot topic," said San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill,
chairman of the California State Sheriffs' Association's jail and
corrections committee. "It's constantly being discussed now."

Officials say the everyday reality of maintaining safety in a jail
means thorough searches must be done on every inmate, regardless of
their crime.

"When we're placing someone in the general jail population, we have an
obligation to ensure the safety of the staff and inmates inside,"
Mayer said. "And without being gross about it, it's not uncommon to
find a weapon -- a razor or knife -- concealed in (someone's) buttocks."

Civil rights lawyers and some former inmates say that policy violates
state law. They say that the searches are inhumane and humiliating and
that jail officials routinely trample on the civil rights of people
arrested who have yet to be convicted of a crime or even formally
charged with one.

"In prison, group nudity is very common," said attorney Mark Merin,
who filed the Sacramento and San Francisco suits. "If someone is
smoking dope on a cellblock, they strip-search everyone. But there are
different levels of protection before someone is convicted."

Sacramento officials have modified the practice of doing group
searches of every inmate housed at the jail in the wake of Judge
Thomas M. Cecil's ruling, which is being appealed.

Cecil based his ruling on a 1984 California law that defined
reasonable suspicion as an arrest for a violent crime, weapons charge
or drug offense, or when jail officials had other reasons to believe
contraband was hidden.

A legislative counsel opinion issued to clarify the law said officials
also may search anyone sent to the general jail population, which has
been the practice of Sacramento officials.

Despite Sacramento's assertion that state inspectors should have
caught the problematic policy, Board of Corrections Executive Director
Tom McConnell said biennial inspections are focused only on verifying
that a policy governing strip-searches exists in each jail.

This spring, Los Angeles County also revised its strip-search policy
after settling a $2.7 million suit brought by female bicyclists who
were arrested during a protest. The women were strip-searched before
being arraigned. Now, before arraignment, inmates are kept apart from
the general jail population and are not strip-searched.

Merin says that for him, the issue is a matter of human decency. He
said he has thousands of statements from women who were strip-searched
while inmates in the Sacramento jail. "We're talking about young
women, old women, people who are obese, people who have never been
nude in public."

Mary Bull, an environmental activist, was the only named plaintiff in
the Sacramento case. She and others were arrested in March 2000 for
disrupting a state hearing on logging policy, a misdemeanor.

Bull has been arrested so often she can't recall how many times she
has been jailed. But she said her Sacramento experience evoked images
"of the Holocaust ... where women are huddling in a corner, covering
their private parts, totally humiliated."

She also filed the San Francisco case after being arrested Nov. 18 on
a felony vandalism charge while pouring red-colored corn syrup on the
steps of Chevron's corporate headquarters on Market Street in an
anti-war protest.

That suit claims Bull, 48, was twice forced to the ground by deputies
who stripped her and visually examined her body cavities after she
refused to consent to the search. She was thrown nude, after each
search, into a cold room for up to 12 hours at a time, it says.

A spokesman for the San Francisco city attorney said it is premature
to comment on the case.

Bull said she believes that middle-class, educated women, like
herself, are obligated to speak out about the civil rights violations
they experience in jail.

"Most of the people (in jail) are disempowered," she said. "They're
not going to fight back. They don't have the means or the motivation
or the resources."

Leellen Patchen, a television producer from Los Angeles, said she has
been forever changed by the visual body cavity search she was forced
to undergo.

"It was the most humiliating, demoralizing moment of my life," said
Patchen, who was held in a Los Angeles jail for three days for a
domestic violence charge that was never filed in court. She and her
ex-husband were arrested in 1987 after she called police to say he had
knocked her unconscious and he accused her of slapping his face.

Even after a judge ordered her release, Patchen said she was taken to
jail and searched in a hallway with about 30 other women. She said
deputies ordered them to remove their clothing an item at a time, and
drop it behind them while staring straight ahead at a wall.

"And then, you know, we got down to our underwear, and we had to take
that off," said Patchen, who said she sobbed during the search. "And
then we had to bend over. ... And after that they came by and we had
to (facilitate the inspection) for them, one at a time. It was awful."

Jail officials acknowledge the experience may be far from pleasant,
but they say it is necessary.

Sacramento and Los Angeles deputies have found "shanks," or knives,
encased in gloves and hidden in body cavities. Last year, a handcuff
key was found hidden in the penis of a Sacramento inmate. And drugs
are a constant issue.

"You have a whole system of commerce with narcotics in the jail," said
Sacramento County Undersheriff John McGinness. "It creates wealth and
power, and in a jail you want everybody on a level playing field (for
safety)."

Inmates who might not be inclined to smuggle drugs or weapons into
jail may be pressured to pick up contraband on trips to court,
officials said.

"When you first get arrested, you don't have time to stash your
contraband," said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Donald Thompson.
"But when you've been in custody for a while, you have time to plan.
There are not always model citizens in the jail."