Not that this surprises me. I worked at Framingham Women's Prison in Massachusetts in the 1990's when male guards rounded up women in the middle of the night for an "alleged" strip-search. They were sued. The women won. But the extent of the case at the jail in Chicopee where Sheriff Michael J. Ashe is reputed to be innovative, concerned and on the side of the women is frankly appalling.

This image of a woman strip searched by a female guard via ACLU. It's humiliating enough, right?

The story broke on May 23rd on a local TV station in the western part of the state,WWLP, and was picked up the next day by the The Springfield Republican but the suit was originally filed in September 2011. At that time, Debra Baggett, a former prisoner at the Western Mass Regional Women’s Correctional Center sued on behalf of 178 women. It took a while — what's new? — but U.S. District Judge Michael A. Ponsor has finally ruled that the class action suit can go forward. 178 women, strip-searched at different times, were allegedly videotaped by a male officer during those body-cavity searches. These were women segregated from the population for different reasons such as suicide watch; the jail claimed that strip searches were necessary for safety per attorney David Milton, interviewed on the Bill Newman radio show, also out of Western Mass.

WWLP reported that Boston Civil Rights attorney Howard Friedman, colleague of Milton, said these travesties occurred between 2008 and 2010, and that "men held the camera for 71% of the videotaped strip searches." Attorney Friedman also asserted, says WWLP that after prison officials became aware of the lawsuit in 2012, the percentage of those videotaped dropped to 2% by 2012.

Where was Sheriff Ashe, the innovator during all this? One can only speculate.

These cases are so clearly an abuse of power that it is almost not worth mentioning the obvious. And yet a woman stripped naked in front of male officers should only occur in cases of emergency. Female officers should always be conducting searches. And it shouldn't take a lawsuit to change an abusive policy. Supposedly the jail now only videotapes when they feel there is a direct threat, i.e. dangerousness, but I bet they aren't letting men hold the camera now. Plus, why on earth we need videotaping of people who might commit suicide when they are being strip searched — for contraband supposedly –is beyond beyond.

In 2011, The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that cross-gender strip searches of prisoners were unconstitutional, reported in the ABA Journal of the American Bar Association. That was when a male sued because a female officer searched him.

A court is expected to rule on whether the policy that was allegedly in place at the women's correctional center was or was not constitutional. That's to happen sometime in early 2014. Let's hope the next judge does the right thing.

Cartoons by artists behind bars give them a way to express themselves without words.  A chance to speak out their conditions, pains and losses as well as use humor to alleviate some of the deepest pains or anger. 

Lois Ahrens at the Real Cost of Prisons Project has comics by many artists behind bars and they tell amazing stories. One of the artists whose work is featured on the home page is Jacob Barrett.  He portrays the brutality of prison with a dark humor in this cartoon titled "Mass Incarceration."

Here he uses color to give us the punch of the "D.O.C." and help us see bodies hauled off in the same kind of vehicle that picks up trees or trash.  The DOC driver looks almost jubilant and the lilting tone contrasts with the awful reality of body after body after body being essentially warehouse.

On Ahrens' website, two complete books are available that tell researched and documented stories of incarceration — all in comics. "As of February 2010, 125,000 copies of the comic books have been printed and more than 115,000 have been sent to families of people who are incarcerated, people who are incarcerated and to organizers and activists throughout the country."  Check out the website if you or your group is interested.

Another place I've found some wonderful comics is on the website Between the Bars.  If you've never visited this site, do.  Many pieces of art some touching writing — all by prisoners across the country. Steve J. Burkett created the piece below around Christmas this past year.

Channeling humor, loss and the feelings of isolation at holidays, Steve puts his shipwrecked, totally surprised-to-be-there-in-spite-of-the-drink Santa on an island. No man is an island?  Go to prison and see if you still feel that way. 

Please see my new article at  about the impending new policy coming to Massachusetts — dogs who will sniff visitors for drugs at state prisons.

Here's how it begins:  "By now, everyone has heard about the amazing sense of smell of bomb-sniffing dogs, who we saw on the front lines of the Boston Marathon bombings. But a new policy coming to state prisons that involves dogs trained to sniff out drugs could rattle some cages, and it should cause us to ask: Is Massachusetts turning down the wrong criminal justice path, aiming to fix a problem without getting at its core cause?"

Be sure and watch the video.  Do these digs remind you of other dogs, anywhere else?  One thing that didn't make it in my article is this:

In an interview, Marina Drummer, Director of the Community Future Collectives in California, said Louisiana has a particularly horrendous drug-sniffing policy: “Visitors line up and go inside a little shed, individually. Around the bottom two feet is chicken wire—each person goes in the box and the handlers take the dog and walk around the shed with the dogs sniffing.” She called it “a terrifying experience for children and humiliating for everybody else.

Check out my newest blog post about the new report issued by MassINC and Community Resources for Justice (CRJ) on– guess what — the sagging state of criminal justice health in Massachusetts.

"The report points out well-worn zingers such as “A decade ago, higher education surpassed spending on corrections by 25 percent. Today the higher education budget is 21 percent lower.”

The report, titled Crime, Cost, and Consequences: Is It Time to Get Smart on Crime?, asks a good question, and it provides some good suggestions for change. But it seems like, year after year, another report comes out that recommends significant change to the system. And it seems that, year after year, we look over our policies, brood over how much money we’re spending, shake our heads at how many people keep returning to prison, and then, just like that, wash our hands and choose not to follow the recommendations."  More.

by Guest Blogger BitcoDavid  

The title of this piece is actually a quote by Justice Hugo Black, as he wrote the majority opinion in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright, on March 18, 1963 – an opinion, and a fundamental right, seen as so important to that Supreme Court, that they were unanimous in their decision.

Clarence Earl Gideon was brought up on charges in Florida, for breaking and entering. He could not afford an attorney. At the arraignment, he asked for a Public Defender, but was refused. Instead, he was told that the court was only mandated to provide counsel in capital cases. Gideon ended up serving 5 years.

     Gideon – by himself and from prison – appealed, pleading his case on Florida State Prison letterhead – in pencil – and utilizing law books from the prison library. As defendant in his suit, he named the Secretary to the Florida Department of Corrections, H.G. Cochran. By the time the case was heard, Louie L. Wainwright had replaced Cochran. Gideon successfully argued that his 6th and 14th amendment rights had been violated. His attorney, assigned him by the SCOTUS, would be none other than future Supreme Court Justice – Abe Fortas.

Upon receipt of this ruling, a new trial was held, and in it, Gideon was given an attorney. He was acquitted in his second trial. Had he had competent legal council in his first trial, he may never have had to serve time at all.

But, a lot has changed since 1963.

Where the necessary evil that is prison, existed once to serve society – and the justice system was built around an effort to keep innocents out of incarceration – we now have a prison industry that views the public as grist for its mill – fodder for its filthy lucre. States weigh the costs of providing justice against the profits of warehousing human beings.

Several paradigms have shifted since Gideon. We now have a War on Drugs complete with mandatory sentencing, gang activity, multinational military incursion and a gun lobby that relishes arming both sides in the conflict. We have the largest narcotics consumption rate in the entire world, and at the same time we fund and arm nothing short of military juntas to enforce drug laws.

We now have a war on poverty – not LBJ’s idyllic Great Society – but rather, a war on the poor, themselves. Taxpayers, suffering under the yoke of a broken economy can no longer justify paying for the needs of those less fortunate. It’s a tough row to hoe, for a politician during a close race, to ask for tax dollars to provide legal defense for criminals, especially indigent, drug addicted ones.

We now have a largely privatized prison system, which can only function when beds are full. These companies spend vast sums on lobbying legislators to pass more and more draconian laws, more and more mandatory sentences and more and more budget cuts in terms of legal defense and public civil liberties.

And, of course – as if we’re not fighting enough wars – there’s the good ol’ War on Terror. Nowadays, it doesn’t require flying jets into buildings to be labeled a terrorist. You can have a penchant for typing too much on your computer. You can try your hand at flash-mob type civil disobedience, or you can simply join a group of likeminded activists who want to rescue companion animals.

Our society has turned more punitive and more afraid, while at the same time our coffers are now bare. States are commonly seeking out ways to kneecap the Gideon ruling. In the end however, we lose. Deny America’s promise of justice to one, you deny justice to all.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

BitcoDavid is a blogger and a blog site consultant. In former lives, he was an audio engineer, a videographer, a teacher – even a cab driver. He is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and a Pro/Am boxer. He has spent years working with diet and exercise to combat obesity and obesity related illness. He can currently be found, pounding away on the keyboard at DeafInPrison.com and BitcoDavid’s BoxingBlog.

• Oyez Project (listen to the oral argument).
• Gamso: An Obvious Truth
• Greenfield: The Silence of Gideon
• Bobby G. Frederick: Happy Birthday Gideon
• Windypundit: 1-800-LAW-REP-4
• NYT: Gideon’s Muted Trumpet
• The Guardian: Why it’s one law for the rich in America and McJustice for the rest
• Stephen B. Bright and Sia M. Sanneh: Fifty Years of Defiance and Resistance After Gideon v. Wainwright [PDF].
• Second Class Justice: 50 years after Supreme Court declares lawyers are constitutionally required, the right to counsel is violated every day in criminal courts
  
• Connecticut Law Tribune: Public Defender Resigns Over Lack Of Resources