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2/1/2008 3:33 AM

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Associated Press

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Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA - Court rulings prohibit routine strip searches of minor offenders, but a privately run prison conducts them on all new inmates, a lawsuit charged.

The potential class-action suit, filed in federal court this week against The Geo Group, involves a drunken-driving suspect who was strip-searched at a county prison the firm manages near Philadelphia.

"It's humiliating," lead plaintiff Stephen D. Bussy, 53, said Thursday.

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Bussy, a home-health worker and college graduate from Media, said he was strip-searched during intake last summer at the Delaware County Prison. A second full-body search occurred during his four-month stay - he was unable to post bail - in a shower littered with feces, the lawsuit states.

The Geo Group, previously known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp., does not comment on pending litigation, spokesman Pablo Paez said Thursday.

The company, with 2006 revenues of $860 million, manages 49 corrections and immigration facilities in the United States, many of them in Texas and California. The firm, based in Boca Raton, Fla., also operates a half-dozen sites overseas.

Bussy's lawyers are seeking to have his lawsuit apply to possibly thousands of minor offenders who were strip-searched at a Geo Group-run prisons nationwide, but a judge must first grant class-action status.

More than a decade ago, a group of women protesting a pigeon shoot were arrested and strip-searched in the Schuylkill County jail. The case led to a precedential ruling in 1993 in which U.S. District Judge Franklin Van Antwerpen wrote: "The feelings of humiliation and degradation associated with being forced to expose one's nude body to strangers for visual inspection is beyond dispute."

Other federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have issued similar guidelines. Authorities must have reason to think a minor offender is hiding drugs or other contraband to search them, civil rights lawyer say.

This week's complaint mirrors similar class-action suits filed around the country against government agencies.

Authorities in Camden County, N.J., last year agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle suit over prison strip searches conducted between 2003 and 2005, while other suits are pending in Philadelphia and Lancaster.

"The rule appears to be at this point, you can't have a blanket policy," said David Rudovsky, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who represents Bussy. "You would think that prison officials would be aware of it and would be careful."

©2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


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