This examination also found that some small cities across Pennsylvania - including Darby, Pottstown and Erie - aggressively used nuisance laws to clear the streets and curtail drug dealing.

The arrests stemming from those laws - and the strip searches that often result - hit blacks at rates far above their numbers in the population, an analysis shows.

The typical subject of a questionable strip search is "the African American teenage male brought in on loitering" charges, said attorney Charles J. LaDuca, one of the lawyers suing Philadelphia. Lawyers for both sides are discussing a possible settlement.

LaDuca, who recently negotiated a $7.5 million settlement agreement for inmates strip-searched in Camden County, has filed similar lawsuits against the jails in Allegheny and Dauphin Counties. Sheppard, the Johns Hopkins biophysicist strip-searched after the party, is one of his clients.

For the last several years, class-action lawyers have roamed the country, filing lawsuits against county jails with unconstitutional strip-search policies - and have won multimillion dollar settlements in California, New Mexico, New York, New Jersey and Florida, often without a trial.

A Pennsylvania official says new rules will be ready by next year. By then, experts say, more such lawsuits are almost guaranteed.

"It's going to go from one county to another like wildfire," says Raymond Sabbatine, a former Kentucky jail warden who advises corrections officials across the country on proper strip-search procedures.

Given Pennsylvania's lack of policies and the inconsistent practices from county to county, he said, "it's kind of like a duck shoot, hunting at a baited field."

Harrisburg strip search

Sheppard, looking for a break from her Johns Hopkins laboratory, drove up from Baltimore the Friday before Labor Day this year and pitched her tent with hundreds of others.

But organizers shut down the festival after a man drowned in the river in the wee hours of Saturday. By 9 a.m., they announced that boats would begin shuttling the partygoers back to Harrisburg.

When the 31-year-old scientist and her group disembarked, Harrisburg police charged all of them with violating a city parks ordinance.

Locals were told to expect citations in the mail and released. Sheppard and dozens of others from out of state were handcuffed, put in police vans, and taken to the Harrisburg police station to await a court hearing. Some were shackled together with leg irons.

Hours later, Sheppard said, a district judge ordered each to post $1,051 bail. Anyone who didn't have that amount - in cash - was going to Dauphin County Prison.

At 1 a.m. Sunday, shortly after she arrived, a female prison officer escorted Sheppard into a shower room.

"She asked me to remove all of my clothing," Sheppard said.

Naked, she first faced the guard and then was told to turn around and bend over.

Sheppard was having her period: "I was asked to remove a tampon," she said. She could hear male guards talking just around the corner; mortified, she realized they could hear everything.

Much of the rest is a daze for Sheppard. When the search was over, the female guard handed her a uniform, and another guard took her to a cell.