COLUMN: Crime and punishment: Strip search style
Last Monday, the Supreme Court ruled in a narrow decision that someone arrested for any offense can be strip searched for any reason.
The cops do not need a reason to assume the arrested individual has something he or she should not have. All they need to legally order a person mole rat naked is a pair of handcuffs, a very bad sense of humor and a flashlight (for peeking).
The court's decision was no doubt in part driven by the obvious need to allow our stressed-out and under-appreciated law enforcement officials to see a little bit of action on the job without having to tell the spouse, but it makes me wonder if they had at all considered the egregious human rights violations that could ensue.
However, in considering the issue of a majority of arrested individuals hiding contraband in their anal cavities that is so severe it threatens a societal breakdown, it makes perfect sense in the current legal and political climate for human rights to be of no concern to anyone.
In all fairness, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion that exceptions to the ruling were possible. They did not, of course, specify exactly what these exceptions were. That is for the legislation to decide.
The legislation, however, cannot even agree on whether or not ham is better than turkey (it's not) or if you should throw a dishrag away once it starts to stink (you really should).
Here's a funny joke: How many Senators does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: Trick question. The bill appropriating funds for a new light bulb is held up in a Congressional subcommittee. Once the report is in, the bill will be filibustered to outer space so everyone will have to do their reading (and strip searching) by candlelight.
If there is a lesson to be learned in all this, it may be this: Pay your parking tickets, folks. Unpaid parking fines could lead to an arrest, which would naturally lead to a strip search to see if there is any money hidden in unlikely places that the police could confiscate to pay for all the latex gloves that will be needed to remove all of the things making free-for-all strip searches so necessary in the first place.
Here is another hilarity: This decision gives a mostly white police force even more of an upper hand by giving them the legal authority to strip search, degrade and humiliate anyone arrested for any reason. In a country where minorities are disproportionately represented in the prison system, it is likely they are the group that will be the recipient of the majority of abuses that will result from this decision.
Oh, wait — that's not funny at all.
