Advocates: Strip searches impede inmate therapy

Allegheny County Jail policy draws criticism

Therapists who work with women in the Allegheny County Jail say a new strip-search policy threatens to derail their work and retraumatize inmates.

Jail officials in January began strip searching inmates after every meeting with their attorneys in what appears to be an attempt to crack down on synthetic drugs smuggled into the jail in chemical-soaked paper.

Tomilyn Ward, executive director of MAYA Organization, a nonprofit that provides counseling to women who are survivors of childhood sexual assault, recently said the same strip-search policy has been applied to inmates who receive therapy from the nonprofit.

MAYA therapists meet one on one with inmates in the jail for an hour each week, Ms. Ward said in an interview Friday. Now, each woman is strip searched after each therapy session, she said.

Because the women who come for therapy have survived sexual abuse, enduring a strip search is particularly difficult and makes providing therapy harder, she said.

“It sets back the progress that has been made for the client and also for the therapeutic environment,” she said. “There is trust that is lost with the therapist if they’re coming to see us and then being strip searched. There will be a decrease in clients who come see us.”

Akita Donald, a therapist for MAYA, said the organization plans to ask Warden Orlando Harper to make an exception to the new strip-search policy for therapy visits.

During strip searches, inmates remove all of their clothing and a corrections officer checks under their feet and armpits, between their buttocks, and around their genitals. Men lift their testicles and women lift their breasts to allow officers to check underneath for contraband.

People who undergo strip searches generally feel that they’ve “lost some dignity,” said Robert Tanenbaum, a practicing clinical and forensic psychologist based near Philadelphia. But for people who have experienced