Review and End Routine Strip Searches of Prison Visitors

Family members, friends, attorneys and volunteers pass through security screening every day to visit people in custody. Most of that screening - identification checks, metal detectors, scanners and pat-downs - is a normal part of keeping facilities safe. This petition is about something narrower: the use of highly invasive strip searches as a routine condition of visiting, applied to visitors who are not individually suspected of anything.

Being required to undress for inspection is a profound intrusion on personal dignity and privacy. When it becomes a routine condition of entry, many families - especially those bringing children, elderly relatives or survivors of trauma - simply stop visiting. That outcome weakens the family connections that correctional systems themselves describe as important to rehabilitation and facility safety.

Security screening of visitors is legitimate and necessary: facilities must prevent contraband such as weapons and drugs from entering. Legal standards for visitor searches vary by jurisdiction, and many correctional policies and court decisions already distinguish routine entry screening from more invasive searches, which typically call for individualized justification. This petition does not claim that all visitor strip searches are currently unlawful, and it is not a statement of the law of any particular jurisdiction. It asks agencies to review their policies and choose the least intrusive effective tools.

What this petition asks for:

• End suspicionless, routine strip searches as a standard condition of visiting a correctional facility.
• Rely first on less intrusive, evidence-based screening alternatives such as walk-through and hand-held detectors, body scanners, property searches and trained canine screening.
• Reserve more invasive searches for documented, individualized circumstances, subject to written criteria, supervisory approval and the visitor's clear ability to decline the search and leave.
• Publish visitor-search policies, document each use of an invasive search, provide an accessible complaint and review mechanism, and report periodically on how these searches are used.

This petition proposes a policy review and change. It is not legal advice.