Family Court ends policy of strip-searching juveniles

Philadelphia's Family Court marked its move Monday into a shiny new $222 million courthouse with a new policy requiring juvenile detainees to be strip-searched before going to their court hearings.

The policy lasted about as long as the ceremonial ribbon cut by court officials.

By Tuesday morning, the strip-search policy had been abolished after complaints from child advocates who questioned the propriety and constitutionality of the procedure.

"It did occur, and it was ceased," Charles Cunningham, the Defender Association of Philadelphia's first assistant, said Friday. "The important thing was that when it was brought to the attention of those in charge, it was no longer permitted."

Cunningham said the policy was in effect only the first day of Family Court's operation at the new building at 15th and Arch Streets.

Cunningham said that he did not know how many juveniles were subjected to a strip search, but that the search was limited to those detainees brought to court from the Juvenile Justice Services Center - the city's juvenile detention facility - and Youth Studies Services Center - and community-based "detention shelters."

Officials from the Sheriff's Office, which transports prisoners from city jails to the courts, could not be reached Friday for comment.

Frank Keel, spokesman for Family Court, issued a statement Friday confirming the strip searches and said the policy was halted after "concerns raised by child advocates."

Keel also released the text of a new search policy for juveniles drafted by Family Court Administrative Judge Kevin M. Dougherty, who leaves the post next month, and the new administrative judge, Margaret T. Murphy, and the office of Sheriff Jewell Williams.

The new policy "strictly prohibits . . . strip searches involving the exposure of intimate body parts . . . absent extraordinary circumstances."

In general, the new policy says that juvenile detainees brought into the courthouse from the city's youth detention center or community detention shelters will undergo "standard screening procedures" - passing through a metal detector and possibly also a "nonintrusive body scan using a handheld wand."

Juveniles committed to a detention facility from a courtroom will undergo a "comprehensive search," according to the policy.

The policy defines a comprehensive search as including scanning by a metal detector and/or a handheld wand; a pat-down or "nonintrusive search of undergarments."

Strip searches have long been among the thorniest of civil rights issues, especially when used by police or prison officials on juveniles or people charged with minor traffic infractions and misdemeanors.

In an article last year in the journal Human Rights, John W. Whitehead, founder and president of the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit legal center focusing on constitutional freedoms, bemoaned the lack of "any bright-line distinction for what constitutes a strip search."

Whitehead wrote that the lack of clear court rulings except in extreme cases "complicates any attempt to defend individuals against what is tantamount to state-sponsored humiliation and visual rape."

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