Inmates Have Privacy Right During Strip Searches, 7th Cir. Says

Convicted prisoners still have a limited constitutional privacy right during body searches, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled Tuesday.

The court said the decision puts it in line with every other circuit court that has decided the issue, which the Supreme Court hasn’t addressed.

A class of over 200 current and former inmates at the Lincoln Correctional Center in Logan County, Ill., argued that a mass strip search performed as part of a cadet training exercise violated their Fourth and Eighth Amendment rights. During the search, the officers stripped the inmates in open areas, insulted and ...