While it may be difficult, if not impossible, for a prisoner’s family members to know what the life of their imprisoned loved one is like, a recent revelation strained even my imagination – and I’ve been living in a cage for nearly 30 years.
Imagine, if you will, that after spending a few hours with your incarcerated son, his return inside leads him to a metal-fenced cage where he is ordered to strip. While his clothes are fingered by staff, looking and feeling for lumps of contraband, the prisoner opens his mouth and fingers his cheeks to allow examination, shows both sides of his hands, runs his fingers through his hair, raises his arms to show his arm pits, turns and lifts his feet to show the bottoms of his feet, then bends over to spread his buttocks and expose his anus. Up to that point, it’s just a standard post-visitation strip search. But, then, imagine that the prisoner is ordered to bend over, back up against the fence, and hold still while a dog handler commands his animal to sniff the prisoner’s butt.
Any competent dog trainer will tell you that a good drug-sniffing canine can detect a couple grams of marijuana in the 30 gallon gas tank of a road-hot vehicle. In fact, drug-detecting canines are regularly used at this facility to seek out contraband during cell searches and the inspection of in-coming supplies and materials. However, forcing a naked prisoner to bend over and back up to a fence so a dog can sniff at his anus serves, not to make the dog’s contraband detecting job easier, but to intimidate, debase, and dehumanize the prisoner, and perhaps, to satisfy the perverse inclinations of the dog-handler, his supervisors, and any other staff present.
Pursuant to Alaska Department of Corrections Policy and Procedure, if a prisoner is suspected of having contraband within his body, either by swallowing it or placing it in his rectum, the prisoner is placed in a dry-cell (a cell without running water) and remains there until he has provided several bowel movements for examination and, if security staff’s suspicion is vindicated, recovery of the contraband. There is no provision in those written Policy and Procedures for the use, or misuse, of canine units in the manner just descried. Still, this is a practice prescribed by the Administrators of this for-profit prison facility in Florence, Arizona, owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America.
What governmental body empowered to make law, establish Policies and Procedures, or enter into contracts for the out-of-state housing of Alaska’s prisoners has authorized this practice by their contractor? The Office of the Governor? The Alaska Legislature? The Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Corrections? This practice in an illegitimate and immoral abuse of authority that serves only to intimidate, dehumanize, and debase prisoners. Let me ask you: How would you view this behavior, if the prisoner were female? Or, if the person being treated in such a fashion were your daughter and the dog’s owner was your neighbor? I would hope, in all cases that you would see an act of bestiality perpetrated by a perverse criminal.
- It's a Dog's Life part 2
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