Trigger Warning: Emotional and Sexual Violence
The blinking green light of the officer’s body-worn camera taunts me in this small room. The cold, clammy, dirt-crusted floor grates against my bare feet as I stand there in nothing except my bra and panties. I’m aware of the yellow cage a couple feet away, always ready in case the officers need it. The officer looks at me and says, “This is a full strip search. Remove everything.”
My natural instinct is to refuse. Then I remember that if I refuse this order, I’ll get a first-class ticket straight to segregation and possibly lose future visits with my family.
This isn’t my first strip search during my incarceration. They’re conducted regularly: on arrival, before and after in-person visits and in-prison job assignments, sometimes for punishment—whenever they deem fit, really. This, however, is the first time it’s being filmed. I am incarcerated in Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, Michigan’s only women’s prison. At the time of the events I have just described, it is January 2025 and the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) has just implemented a new policy mandating that correctional officers use body-worn cameras except during certain qualifying events—and though those events include “any place where a reasonable expectation of privacy exists,” it does not specifically spell out strip searches. And so here we are.
Read the full story from Amber Martens at Inquest here.
