Anyone lodged in Louisville jail is now strip searched. What to know about new policy

Louisville Metro Department of Corrections officers are now strip searching all people being admitted into the general population at the city’s jail.

The Courier Journal first learned of the policy after obtaining an internal email, and Metro Corrections director Jerry Collins later confirmed the policy during a recent interview.

The strip searches are conducted in addition to a screening by an X-ray body scanner so detailed it shows bones, medical implants or drugs hidden inside someone's body.

“If you get arrested for jaywalking, and you go through your pat search and the body scanner and there’s nothing to indicate that you need to be strip searched, we’re not going to strip search you,” Collins said. “However, if you stay long enough to move up to the floors, we’re going to strip search you if you move into another security area, if you’re not getting released on the front end.”

In past decades, blanket strip search policies at jails have cost local governments in Kentucky millions of dollars. However, a landmark 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling said people arrested for any offense could be strip searched before being admitted to a jail’s general population.

Collins said the policy, which took effect on Sept. 29 according to the email obtained by The Courier Journal, had been deemed legal by the Jefferson County Attorney’s Office and was “consistent with the penological interests and what the courts have ruled we can do.”

But despite their constitutionality, strip searches remain controversial.

“The jail has real big problem with people who are there accessing contraband, who need mental health services, who need other services,” said Corey Shapiro, legal director of the ACLU of Kentucky. “And the answer to solve their big problems should not be to humiliate people, even if it’s constitutionally acceptable. The answer should be to provide the services that people who are incarcerated need and to limit the number of people who are being incarcerated.”

Jail says security measures reduced overdose deaths

Collins said the introduction of more strip searches is part of the jail’s “layered” security measures aimed at combating contraband.

The jail has credited the addition of new body scanners last year — combined with other measures like changing how mail is handled and expanding the jail’s intelligence unit — with reducing the flow of drugs into the jail, which saw five overdose deaths in less than a year between November 2021 and October 2022.

Of the three deaths that have occurred in the last year, Collins said, two were from natural causes and one was a suicide.

“Looking back, it seemed like drugs were all over the jail. And we were finding drugs all the time, we were responding to overdoses it seemed like every week,” Collins said.

While officers intercept drugs coming into the jail, Collins said, it’s become rarer to find drugs in the dorms where incarcerated people are held.

“We still find a (lot) of dope on the front end. We don’t find as much in the jail. And that’s attributed to the layers that we put in,” he said.

According to statistics provided by Metro Corrections spokesperson Maj. Darrell Goodlett, the opioid-reversing medication Narcan was used 44 times between January and May of this year, but only nine times between June and October.

On Nov. 1, Collins said he believed there had not been an overdose that resulted in the use of Narcan in two or three months. He said when officers find drugs in the dorms these days, it's often Suboxone, a medication used to treat opioid addiction. Suboxone is prescribed in LMDC and Collins believes some incarcerated people "cheek it" — that is, hide the pill in their mouth rather than swallow it during pill call — or otherwise conceal it.

While the measures implemented have been successful in keeping drugs out, Collins said attempts to get contraband in are “never going to stop,” and that there is “always going to be another way to get it in. So we have to be sharp.”

He described people “sewing fentanyl into their clothes” and others intentionally violating home incarceration to be able to bring drugs into LMDC. As The Courier Journal has previously reported, some Metro Corrections officers have been fired, or resigned in lieu of termination, for their involvement in alleged plots to smuggle drugs into the facility.

Asked what his response would be to people who ask why the jail needs to strip search people in addition to using the body scanners, Collins said while the machines were helpful, they were imperfect, and that a layered approach to security was needed.

According to a Metro Council-ordered report into deaths at Louisville’s jail published in April, “60 percent of arrested persons coming into the jail facility are strip searched.” That same report, which was authored by a former FBI agent, encouraged Metro Corrections to “evaluate whether increased use of strip searches is prudent.”

Collins was unable to give The Courier Journal an updated percentage of how many people are strip searched coming into the jail.

According to the email obtained by The Courier Journal, privacy curtains had been erected for strip searches and more were to be installed.

Are blanket strip-search policies legal?

Under Kentucky state law, people entering local jails can be strip searched only when officers have “reasonable suspicion” that the person has “a weapon, drugs, or other item of contraband.”

That reasonable suspicion must be based on narrow criteria, including:

• A current felony offense, fugitive status, or past felony-level convictions on charges involving drugs or violence;

• Behavior, reliable information, or history that indicates they likely have contraband;

• Refusal to submit to a clothed pat down; or the discovery of contraband during a clothed pat down;

• They are ordered to custody by a court and were previously not in custody;

• Contact with the public through a contact visit, a court appearance in an area the public may have had access to or after transport from or through an area the public may have access to.

However, the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling held that people arrested for any offense could be strip searched before being admitted to jail, even when there was no reason to suspect the person had contraband on them.

Attorney Greg Belzley sued a number of Kentucky counties over strip search policies in the 1990s and 2000s, including Jefferson County, winning millions of dollars for his clients. His suits largely revolved around strip searches of people charged with misdemeanors who were not admitted to general population.

He declined to comment on the interpretation of the current strip search law, but said the level of drugs finding their way into American jails weighed on his view of strip searches.

He said if a person held at a jail — such as LMDC, with so many recent overdose deaths — came to him about being subjected to a strip search that was aimed at keeping drugs out of the facility, he would turn down the case.

“I wouldn’t take that case because I wouldn’t want to interfere with that process and an inmate die as a consequence and I have that on my conscience,” he said. “I used to do a lot of work in strip search cases, so I know that’s a terrible invasion of privacy. But I think that gets trumped by somebody dying of an OD on contraband drugs.”

Reach reporter Josh Wood at jwood@courier-journal.com or on Twitter at @JWoodJourno

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville Metro Corrections now strip searching all lodged in jail