Why are female guards allowed to supervise male inmates (or vice versa) while they’re showering, using the toilet, during cavity searchs etc. I know sex discrimination is illegal but don’t those laws not apply when one’s sex is a bona fide job requirement? After all a producer couldn’t be sued if s/he refused to hire a man to play a female role. If your job involves seeing people in stages of undress everyday could your employer require you to be the same sex as the people your supervising? Schools are allowed to hire male and female gym teachers for the purpose of supervising the students in the lockerrooms.
Because there is not any bona fide occupational qualification here. So, no, an employer could not “require you to be the same sex as the people your supervising”, unless they could meet some strict legal standards proving that it is a requirement.
Either a male or a female is equally qualified to guard a prison inmate. If it offends the prisoner’s modesty, too bad – that’s one of the consequences of being sent to prison. And some people’s modesty is upset by anyone, of either gender, watching them when they are undressed. The job is guard, not peep show. Prison guards (who want to survive) have more vital things to do than drool over their prisoners.
And given the cutbacks in education, it’s becoming fairly common nowdays for schools to share positions – having one coach for both the boys & girls basketball team, for example. It works fine – they’re teaching basketball, after all, not sex education!
P.S. You seem to have completely forgotten about the existance of gay & lesbian people in your post. What if the male you have guarding male prisoners is gay? (Way back when I was in high school, it was common knowledge that all the girl gym teachers & coaches were ‘dykes’. We heard quite a few jokes about it in the boys locker room.)
It’s only necessarily deemed acceptable in the USA.
From the British Prison Service prison handbook for women (pdf):
I strongly suspect other western countries have a similar approach.
I have never heard of a guard performing a cavity search on a prisoner of the opposite sex. Standing watch at the local drunk tank is a different matter, though.
Think about going through security at an airport. The person who physically pads you down is always of the same sex. Stands to reason. They don’t allow guys to grope women’s buttocks and they don’t allow women to paw around guys’ genital area (and trust me, I’ve asked).
I don’t know about prison, but as a street cop we search members of the opposite sex all the time. This has to be done in a particular manner (such as using the backs of the hands to search around the breasts and groin), but we don’t always have a female officer available. More intense searches do require a female, and body cavity searches are only performed by medical personnel (that requirement probably isn’t universal).
Yes some peoples modesty is offended by undressing in front of anybody but total privacy isn’t practical! Prison guards do abuse their power. Usually it’s male guards in female institutions. Male guard were previously not allowed any direct contact with female inmates (they handled weapons and guarded the building) matrons were used to supervise the inmates. And not everbody who’s in prison is a convict. Many are pre-trial detainees who are innocent until proven guilty!
Yes, but they still a coach of the same-sex as the students to supervise the lockerroom! If a school let a male coach watch teenage girls shower and change the parents would sceam bloody murder!
I not sure how to respond to that. True it could make prisoners uncomfortable. So could being raped be other prisoners. Just cause someone’s gay/lesbian/bi doesn’t mean they’ll jump on everybody. One’s sexuality is less obvious than one’s actual sex.
P.S. I am a gay male so the idea that I’d forget about gays & lesbians is ludicrous (but you didn’t know that).
Quite frankly any reason I can find not to touch a prisoner is good to me.
In the UK we have just had a constructive dismissal case found in favour of the female prison officer who was ordered to carry out hands on searches of prisoners and was dismissed when she refused.
She won her case, has been awarded compensation and has been reinstated.
From a more practical point of view, male officers who search female prisoners without some urgent and pressing reason (such as trying to locate missing set of keys or perhaps a weapon just used in an assualt) are very vulnerable to being accused of assault, or sexual assault.
In fact there are rules that dictate under what circumstances prisoners can be searched, its simply not sufficient justification to search one because they are merely prisoners.
An example I can think of, one prisoner (who worked in my shop and obviously cannot name) was taken out of work to attend a mandatory drug test.
He was strip searched and he then dressed, and placed in a holding area, which was searched prior to his occupation of it.
It turned out that he could not be processed for a couple of hours, and when he was taken to the drug test area he was told he would be strip searched again.
The prisoner refused to strip, and also refused the drug test.
He was put throught the disciplinery procedure, and won his case, pointing out that under the rules of the prison system, searches could only be carried out under certain circumstances, and since he had no opportunity ot possess or conceal anything since his previous search, the prison was in breach of the rules.
The reason for these search rules is that it is easy to use searching as a way of harrassing and provoking prisoners into breaking rules that they would not otherwise do, like by trying to thump an officer.
It has happened on occasion, the male officer is suspended on full pay until either the prisons discplinery procedure has cleared them, or if it gets to the judicial system, until they have been cleared by the courts.
There is no need for a female or male to carry out personal searches of the opposite sex since there is no recruitment shortage of staff, and this is the view that courts right up to the European Court of Human Rights would take.
The situation in Badge’s case is completely differant, it is not reasonable to have persons of the right sex available at every street detainment on hand all the time, and given that there is possible risk to life in failing to carry out such searches, or the possible loss of critical evidence of crime, the search rules are modified.
In the UK, any search by the police that involves anything more than the removal of outdoor clothing has to be done in a private place, and only in the presence of officers of the same sex - which often means back in the station.
Do you have any reason to believe that opposite sex correction officers supervise inmates who are showering or using the toilet or having body cavity searches regularly? I don’t work for a prison, but I work for a state law enforcement agency. The agency policy is that an officer of the same sex should supervise urine testing, any other toilet use, and perform searches ( clothed searches- nt even body cavity searches) if at all possible. Of course, if another female officer and I were together and unexpectedly had to arrest a male parolee, one of us would have to search him. But we never went out in single gender teams to execute warrants, and on extraditions there was always one officer the same gender as the prisoner. When I got the prisoner to the local jail, the prisoner was searched again, by a correction officer of the same sex as the prisoner.
I took a quick look at your link regarding abuses- and only about two incidents seem to be related to opposite sex officers supervising naked or toileting inmates. One more is an accusation of male guards disregarding departmentsl policy while searching clothed female inmates. In none of those cases was it clear whether it was the regular practice for opposite sex officers to supervise naked or toileting inmates or to search them, or whether these incidents were the exception. The other abuses have nothing to do with those issues- they simply have to do with men holding positions of authority at a women’s prison.
In fact , this quote from that page suggests that it is not the regular practice to have males search females, or supervise them while undressed :
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