Class action filed over strip searches
Detainees decry ‘humiliating’ treatment at prisons before video court appearances
Facing what seemed like an insurmountable "culture of delays” plaguing the provincial court system, in October 2016 the Quebec government announced a series of measures it hoped could remedy the situation. Among them was that people being held in custody following their arrests in Montreal would no longer make their first court appearance in person before a judge. The hearings would instead be held through a video link-up from local detention centres, depending on where the arrest took place. But if the measure has reduced delays, it also came with a consequence: people entering Montreal’s Bordeaux or Rivière-des-Prairies prisons to use the video technology also need to be strip-searched first, a process the Supreme Court of Canada has deemed “fundamentally humiliating and demeaning.” A new class-action lawsuit, filed in early December but not yet authorized by a judge, is now seeking compensation for people who’ve been affected by the change since October 2016. “The Supreme Court has been saying (strip searches) should be avoided at all costs unless it’s absolutely necessary,” said Anne-Julie Asselin, a lawyer from the firm behind the class action, Trudel Johnston & Lespérance.
“And in our opinion, in these cases, it isn’t necessary.” More specifically, the class action is seeking compensation for anyone brought to either of the two prisons to have their first court appearance via video link and stripsearched only to be granted their release by the presiding judge. It also seeks damages for people “arbitrarily” detained at the prisons while they wait for the paperwork to be transferred from the courthouse following their hearing. In all, it argues each class member should be entitled to $2,500. The lead plaintiff in the class action, Mathieu Barbeau, 43, was arrested for impaired driving in Montreal in September. He was brought to a police operational centre and kept overnight. The next morning, he was loaded into a police van and driven to the Rivière-des-Prairies prison ahead of his scheduled court appearance, by video, in the afternoon. After arriving at the prison, the suit alleges that Barbeau was called into a small cubicle with four-foot-high walls and asked to get naked. The suit says the strip search was performed by the definition established in the law on Quebec’s correctional systems: the person, naked, has their mouth, nostrils and ears searched. They are also to lift “in the case of women, the breasts, and in the case of men, the penis and testicles, and bend to allow the visual inspection of the rectum and vagina.” Barbeau had never been stripsearched or detained before, the suit says. He was ordered released on a promise to appear after his two-minute court appearance by video, but kept detained for another six hours while waiting for the court clerk to transfer the documents to prison authorities. “He remains strongly marked by this traumatic and humiliating experience,” the suit says. “The applicant felt deeply humiliated and despised during the strip search he had to undergo.” According to Asselin, the law firm took a random sample of one week in the fall and found roughly 40 cases that could be eligible for the suit. “If you multiply that by the number of weeks, over two years, it’s a lot of people,” she said. “We know there are several hundred, if not a few thousand.” The suit contends the practice is abusive, but especially so “since it could easily be avoided.” It gives examples to illustrate the point. It says the provincial court system is already doing video-conference appearances from Montreal police operational centres — where people are not strip-searched — on Saturdays and holidays. It also points out that Montreal’s municipal court system will start doing video appearances from police operational centres on weekdays as of next year. “Yes, we’re asking for money because these people have suffered deeply from being strip-searched,” Asselin said. “But our main objective is that this practice just ceases. It makes no sense to keep doing it when you know there’s another way to do it.” Quebec’s public security department, which oversees the province’s correctional facilities, refused to comment on the class action, or the use of strip searches in general, given the matter could be before the courts.