Strip Searches Have a Racist, Dehumanizing Legacy

In March 2018, J’Allen Jones, a 31-year-old Black man incarcerated at Garner Correctional Institution in Connecticut, died after refusing to comply with a strip search. When officers told Jones he needed to submit to the procedure, he resisted. That is when the violence started. Officers forced him onto a bed, pepper-sprayed him, and kneed him in the thighs. Then, officers placed a spit hood over his head, a practice that experts have linked to dozens of in-custody deaths. After 20 minutes, Jones’s breathing became labored and his body went limp, which officers ignored It took another seven minutes before a nurse discovered Jones had no pulse. The Connecticut medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.

The J’Allen Jones case has returned to the spotlight this year after CT Insider reviewed a 350-page report by a Department of Correction investigator. The report  included still photos from the video footage documenting the incident. Now, the ACLU of Connecticut is fighting for the video’s release, arguing the public should know what happens behind prison walls.

Strip searches—the procedure that triggered this deadly encounter—represent a form of state-sanctioned violence with deep historical roots in American racial oppression. The practice of forcing people to disrobe and submit to bodily inspection directly echoes the dehumanizing treatment of enslaved people, who were regularly stripped naked and paraded in front of potential buyers. This historical connection is particularly salient given the disproportionate incarceration rates of Black Americans.

Kevnesha Boyd, a licensed counselor who left the Connecticut Department of Correction in 2019, was traumatized by what she witnessed, according to a public testimony supporting a 2023 bill to limit strip searches. “Watching a strip search is like watching a slave auction taking place in an area that offers no privacy,” Boyd stated. She emphasized that the psychologically damaging effects made mental health treatment “almost impossible” for those in her care. 

Boyd’s testimony echoes what former Washington state prisoner Eugene Youngblood experienced during his nearly 30 years of incarceration. “Each time I had to face this routine, whether to visit my children, mother, or a friend, I felt reduced to nothing, stripped of any sense of respect or humanity,” Youngblood recounted. “The dignity taken from me during those searches is not easily restored, and may never be restored if I’m being honest.” 

For women, strip searches inflict particularly acute trauma, as revealed by numerous lawsuits against prison systems. In Illinois, female prisoners won a $1.4 million settlement after a 2011 mass strip search where menstruating women were forced to remove tampons and bleed onto the floor while guards made lewd comments. In California, an incarcerated man’s wife received $5.6 million after being sexually violated during an invasive strip search while visiting her husband. These cases expose how such searches serve as weapons of humiliation rather than security measures, with one prison official telling a woman that degrading searches were simply “part of visiting.”

The U.S. is far behind other nations in reforming strip search policies In 2020, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Germany’s practice of random strip searches constituted degrading treatment in violation of human rights, finding these searches to be intrusive and lacking legitimate security purposes, particularly when conducted on people who posed no security risk. 

Evidence from around the world demonstrates that reducing strip searches does not increase contraband in prisons. Body scanners and other technology have shown time and time again to be more effective alternatives while preserving human dignity.

Despite this evidence, Connecticut legislators passed a watered-down version of the 2023 bill. Instead of raising the standard for strip searches from “reasonable suspicion” to “probable cause,” the final legislation merely mandated a study of alternatives, such as body scanners. This compromise left advocates deeply frustrated as routine strip searches continued.

Until we acknowledge strip searches as the traumatizing racial and sexual violence they are—not security measures but tools of domination with deadly potential—more incarcerated people will suffer the trauma, humiliation, and in some cases, like J’Allen Jones, death that comes from being treated as less than human.

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