I decide to jiggle this one free before moving on:
"Mass. AG said to be investigating lawyer searches at prisons" by Maria Cramer, Globe Staff March 14, 2015
Attorney General Maura Healey is investigating claims by several female lawyers who said correctional officers asked them to submit to humiliating searches before they could be allowed into prisons, according to four women who have received calls from Healey’s office.
The investigation is being conducted by the office’s civil rights division, said the women, who have received calls in the last week.
Angela Lehman, a Somerville lawyer who said she had to lift her shirt and let an officer feel around her bra before she could visit a client at MCI-Norfolk, expressed hope the inquiry will lead to changes at the state Department of Correction.
“This has been going on for so long, and no one has ever done anything,” Lehman said. “I hope that they can make the DOC seriously change their policies so we don’t have to go through this or dread going to visit our clients.”
A spokeswoman for Healey said the office cannot confirm the existence of an investigation.
Female lawyers challenge ‘invasive’ searches at prisons
Several lawyers said prison officials in Norfolk had asked them to show their bras to prove they had no contraband.
The women contacted said they were asked to describe what happened to them and how the incidents interfered with their ability to meet with clients.
The attorney general’s office acts as legal counsel to all state agencies, including the Department of Correction. If a civil rights violation is found, Healey’s office would work with DOC officials to change their practices.
Darren Duarte, a DOC spokesman, declined to comment on the investigation but said that Daniel Bennett, secretary of the Executive Office of Public Safety, has met with the chief counsel of the Massachusetts Bar Association “to discuss the matter and the steps the DOC is taking relative to its procedures.”
The inquiry was sparked by a Feb. 24 letter from Patricia DeJuneas, an appellate lawyer, who complained to Healey, the DOC, and other state agencies after a correctional officer at MCI-Norfolk told her before she could visit a prospective client she would have to lift up her shirt and “shake her bra” out. The officer was following the orders of a lieutenant who was not convinced a metal detector went off because of DeJuneas’s underwire bra. DeJuneas refused and eventually was allowed into the prison.
After her complaint, the Globe interviewed four other female lawyers and a female law student who described similar encounters at MCI-Norfolk and the Bay State Correctional Center in Norfolk. Bennett has said he would review procedures.
In a March 6 reply to DeJuneas, DOC deputy commissioner Thomas Dickhaut said that going forward, when a prison staffer is not satisfied that an underwire bra was what set off the detector, the visitor will be asked to consent in writing to a pat search. If the visitor does not consent, she will not be allowed into the prison.
“Any pat search will not include asking the visitor to shake out the bra,” Dickhaut wrote.
DeJuneas said Dickhaut’s response did little to mitigate her concerns since prison officials can still turn a lawyer away for refusing to be patted down.
“The only change for women in my shoes is that they won’t be asked to shake their bra out,” she said. “It doesn’t say that we won’t be asked to show our bra.”
Prison inmates meet with lawyers for a variety of reasons — many are appealing their convictions, while others wish to sue over treatment they are receiving behind bars.
Lawyers say face-to-face meetings with clients are far more effective than phone conversations. In prison, they can meet in private areas, away from other inmates and correction officers who may listen in on phone conversations and make clients feel less inclined to confide important information to their lawyers.
Correction officials said tight security measures are vital to protect the safety of employees and inmates in prisons. Two correction officers were fatally shot at MCI-Norfolk in 1972 by an inmate who used a gun smuggled in by his wife.
In his letter to DeJuneas, Dickhaut also said “the introduction of contraband into a correctional facility is a serious threat. . . . Unfortunately, there have been past instances in which inmate visitors, including attorneys, have attempted to introduce contraband into Department of Correction facilities.”
Prosecutors are exempt from prison searches because they are considered public officials, according to the Executive Office of Public Safety.
But lawyers who protest the practices in Massachusetts point to other states, where prison officials have been able to strike a balance between security concerns and the privacy rights of attorneys visiting inmates.
In Rhode Island prisons, a lawyer can enter the prison after going through the detector three times and being searched with a hand-held scanner, unless a prison staffer officer has a strong suspicion that anything besides an underwire bra is setting off the metal detector.
Lehman said she recently visited an inmate in a Rhode Island facility and the treatment she received across state lines was starkly different from the treatment at MCI-Norfolk.
“I felt like a human being as opposed to a criminal,” she said.
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