EDITORIAL - Degrading searches

If the Department of Justice wants to stop “degrading” body searches conducted on visitors in the national prisons, it should provide the necessary equipment to carry out no-contact searches. Such scanners have been in use for a long time in airports around the world.

Seven female personnel of the Bureau of Corrections have been relieved following complaints about the conduct of strip searches on women visiting inmates described as political prisoners at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa. BuCor and NBP officials, however, have defended the strip searches. They explained that visitors are asked to sign a form, agreeing to subject themselves to such searches. Those who refuse can instead communicate digitally with prisoners, the officials said.

The searches became mandatory, the officials explained, amid the confiscation of a high number of contraband during searches within the prison compound, and the many instances when illegal drugs and other contraband were found concealed by visitors not only in their underwear but even inside sanitary napkins and tampons they had on. These were discovered when the visitors were required to squat and the intimate items were ejected, the BuCor and NBP officials explained.

If such thorough body searches are mandatory, the seven female corrections personnel were simply doing their job, and the ones who should be suspended are the officials who ordered them to conduct the strip searches. BuCor officials said the relief of the seven would be in effect while a probe is conducted to determine if they went overboard in carrying out the searches, which the complaining visitors described as degrading and inhumane.

Those are accurate descriptions for any physical search that includes looking for contraband concealed in a woman’s genitals. The NBP, however, has grappled for a long time with the entry of a slew of prohibited items brought by visitors, including weapons and illegal drugs. Aside from the smuggling of contraband inside sanitary napkins, corrupt BuCor and NBP personnel allowed inmates to run from within their detention facilities drug trafficking operations outside prison, and to enjoy items such as air conditioners, a sauna and an entire music recording studio.

Strip searches are conducted because women visitors are allowed to have physical contact with prisoners and can easily hand over contraband. If the government wants to stop the body searches, the physical contact may have to be stopped, and interaction between inmate and visitor limited to seeing each other and talking through a glass divider, as done in other countries. Or else the government can invest in airport-quality body scanners for prison facilities.