Cruel and Unusual Trauma: How Eighth Amendment Principles Governing Conditions of Confinement Should Apply to Juvenile Strip Searches

S.K., a biracial girl from Winnebago County, Wisconsin, was fifteen years old when she was first admitted to Copper Lake School for Girls, a secure juvenile corrections institution. One day, guards accused her of possessing stolen gummy worms. As a consequence of the alleged theft, she was sent to solitary confinement. S.K. was sent to solitary on several occasions while at Copper Lake—one time for passing notes to other youths in her unit. Upon initial intake, after being transferred to solitary, and each time a family member visited, the guards would subject her to strip searches. They required her to take off all of her clothes, ran their hands through her hair, made her display her private parts to them, and mandated that she squat and cough while unclothed. At least some strip searches took place in a room where there was a one-way mirror and a camera: later, she could be watched on video (by any guard, including male guards), and people outside the room could see her naked body through the mirror. On one occasion, a guard strip-searching her wore an activated body camera. Had S.K. been a fifteen-year-old girl from St. Joseph, Missouri, she would have experienced an almost unrecognizable scenario compared to the one she faced at Copper Lake in Wisconsin. In Missouri she could have been placed to serve her sentence at Riverbend Treatment Center, a secure juvenile facility with an entirely different approach to treating its residents. There, even juveniles who commit a serious offense while residing at the center benefit from an “intentionally humane” environment. In other words, a juvenile like S.K. could have acted out, but the youth specialists would nonetheless treat her empathetically and safely when she did; she could even call a “circle” in order to discuss with the group any problematic (or positive) behaviors or attitudes she experienced. In stark contrast with Copper Lake, solitary confinement is never used as punishment at Riverbend. S.K. would never have been subject to the use of pepper spray as ...