'PAT DOWN'

The most surprising fact about the "pat-down" lawsuit in federal court is
that it has to be brought at all.

Two female inmates at Danbury's Federal Correctional Institute -
"correctional institute" is one of our favorite euphemisms - have petitioned
for an exemption for themselves from non-emergency, pat-down searches by
prison guards of the opposite sex. Their claim for exemption is based on
their personal experiences with abuse as
children.

It shouldn't take a petition to halt such searches. Nor should anyone need
to have been abused as a child to find intimate touching offensive. What in
the world does the federal prison system think it's doing by permitting such
a practice at all?

We certainly recognize that conviction and imprisonment mean the loss of a
good many of the conditions that law-abiding citizens take for granted.
Personal privacy, liberty, the pursuit of leisure time activities. As a
matter of fact, prisoners in some respects, have privileges that many
outside might like to try - though we don't believe that any such privilege
would make up for the loss of freedom.

But there are other things that go on in prisons that are inexcusable. Rape,
mayhem and murder, not to mention contraband, all exist in almost every
prison setting. It isn't easy to control several hundred adult human beings
in a confined setting, at least not with the attributes of modern life which
today's prisons allow. Shackling prisoners to the wall of a damp,
below-ground cell might solve the problem - but would be considered a human
rights violation today.

And so is routine "pat-down" searching by guards, whatever their sex, whose
technique borrows more from lust, prurience, and intimidation than from
security consciousness.

Prison isn't expected to be a picnic at taxpayers' expense. But it should be
a place where the penalty is being paid to society, in terms of loss of
liberty, not to other prisoners for abuse or to guards out for a free fondle.

There is no defense to an indefensible practice.