Sleeping in on a Saturday at Minnesota Correctional Facility Shakopee, Jackie woke up to guards at her door. They brought her to intake, where she was strip-searched and body-scanned. Then strip-searched again. Body-scanned two more times, and another two times.
The guards asked her if she was holding any drugs. She was not. She was asked to show herself defecating in a cup to officers. They said, It isn’t just you, five others went through this. From the next cell she heard, You can’t leave until you poop.
I asked Jackie, who is a mother and grandmother and a salesperson in the free world, how she was supposed to do that. “I just woke up, which makes it easier. But it wasn’t.”
Later that day, Jackie was called down to intake again. She was stripped and then sent on a writ to the Mille Lacs County Jail, where she was to be stripped upon arrival. She was restripped before she left the jail and restripped when she returned to Shakopee. The next day, Jackie was again pulled for a urinary test and brought down to intake. She was stripped and subjected to more body scans.
I have been stripped over 992 times.
Jackie has bone density issues. When she asked about the danger of being body-scanned so much, she was told, Don’t worry, it takes three times a day before bone loss.
There is a poster hanging in the hall that we walk by on our way to meals. It reads: Our Mission: Transforming Lives for a Safer Minnesota. The values of DOC: Safety, Fairness, Honesty, Dignity, Equity, Service, Respect
Contrary to such platitudes, incarcerated women experience indignity and disrespect on a daily basis, from working for 50 cents an hour to being unable to get annual teeth cleaning until we’ve been here for years. I’ve spent the past year talking with incarcerated women about one of the worst indignities we face: the constant use of random urine analysis tests (UA) and strip searches. It happens to all of us. It happens to me.
The water in the toilet is bright Smurf blue. The toilet is to the left of an open door. The female guards are two feet from our knees when we’re sitting on the toilet; they stay close for the whole five minutes. There’s no water to drink in the room. The guards put caps on our samples.
Currently, the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) sends our positive tests (false or not) to the Mayo Clinic for lab work. Mayo will not divulge their contract prices for the prison. But online, right now, there are 10-panel testing methods available at these prices: 100 urine cups for $3.00 a test versus 1,000 cheese-square saliva swabs for $6.98 a test.
The ombuds says drug testing with swabs is too costly. It doesn’t look that way. Even if a swab test costs more, time is money, and UAs produce false positives. The current method requires several staff to oversee strips, monitor urination, and cap samples.
l either pee in a cup for the officers within two hours of the UA order or I go into a “segregated detention” cell — solitary confinement. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have a drug problem noted in my file; if my name gets pulled, I have to pee in front of people.
My name was pulled in April last year. The previous two times, I barely needed to go but still produced enough of a sample to pass. A woman in the medication line told me, “That happened to me last time I was here. Luckily this time, I got a quarter of an inch of pee two minutes before the allotted time was up.”
This time, I couldn’t do it. In segregation, I was restripped, even though I hadn’t left the holding cell before walking down the hall with two guards into solitary. I was told I would have to stay in segregated detention for 30 days. As it turned out, the woman in the cell next to mine was there on the same charge. A mother of four and former accountant named Kathleen, she told me:
“When I knew I was coming to prison, my older brother gave me a few pointers. He had been to prison. One of the things he told me was, ‘I know you have been raped before, and I just want to prepare you. That feeling of being violated — you’re going to have that experience when you go to prison.’
The prison makes a choice to treat us this way. There are other ways.
“I thought, ‘What the hell, by people who live there? By staff?’
“‘By staff,’ he said. ‘You’ll be strip-searched. Do as they say. Do it quickly. Get in. Get out.’”
Kathleen and I both left segregation after 15 days. The early release had nothing to do with our behavior. We were released because they needed the cells.
Research suggests that at least 50 percent of women entering prison report having experienced physical and/or sexual abuse before their incarceration. They are also significantly more likely to be sexually harassed and abused while incarcerated, according to a February 2020 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Women with histories of sexual abuse are, of course, particularly traumatized by strip searches and UA testing procedures, as documented in the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Standards to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Prison Rape; Final Rule.
The 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) prohibits staff, volunteers, or persons incarcerated from sexually harassing, intimidating, or acting sexually around the incarcerated. But the DOC nonetheless finds it completely legal for officers to strip us.
This is how it happens. We stand alone about four feet in front of a pair of female guards in a cell. We remove what we’re wearing, handing each garment piece by piece to the guards, who shake them, pat them down, and throw them on the bedframe. We have to shake out the underwear ourselves before tossing it on the pile growing on the metal bed. We are completely nude.
We are then asked to bend at the waist and run our fingers through our hair. Then, standing upright, we show them the palms of our hands, show them the backs of our ears, open up our mouths, and lift our tongues. We stretch our lips to show our gumlines. If we use dentures or have a tampon, we take those out and hand them to the guards for examination. We are then asked to turn around and show the bottoms of our feet, wiggle our toes, then squat and cough three times.
We’re told their policies were implemented for our own safety. The reality is, strips promote unnecessary trauma and serve as a control mechanism. The number of strips performed is staggering; prior to the pandemic, I had an average of eight visits a month. I have been stripped over 992 times.
I’m not the only one. Vivian, a mother and office manager who is not in prison for anything drug-related, was pulled for a random UA in late February 2023. After she was stripped, she provided a urine sample. When it came up drug-positive, she was brought to segregation and restripped. They told her she’d be out by Friday — eight days from the first test — once the sample had been further processed at an off-grounds lab. In fact, she remained in segregation for longer; it normally takes 10-15 days for a lab result. Finally, the off-site lab result showed that the earlier prison test had given a false positive. Vivian was cleared after 10 days in segregation.
The staff said, “False positives happen. You’ll be fine.” But that’s not true.
The staff said, “False positives happen. You’ll be fine.” But that’s not true.
After her release, Vivian was assigned to a different room and roommate. She was lucky she got to keep her job in the kitchen. Had she been in solitary for one more day, it would have earned her a black tag, blocking her from work, the gym, and the library for 90 days, with only one half-hour outside in the courtyard under the status of “unassigned idle.”
In addition to being trapped in solitary confinement for 10 days without TV, radio, snacks, or decent-tasting water, Vivian lost contact with her son because he was in daycare during the time she was permitted to make her one 15-minute phone call; he was used to hearing from her daily. She was in the middle of an investigation to determine the length of her sentence and when she could return to him. If the hearing had happened to fall during her time in segregation, the unflattering detail would have been brought to court in a behavioral report. It was pure luck that it didn’t.
Vivian is not the only person to experience a false positive and be punished for it. A woman in the dayroom tells me that she’s heard of at least 20 people who received one, with K2 or synthetic marijuana showing up on the test. The prison staff do not have an explanation for why there are so many false positives. But it has produced an atmosphere of fear in the prison, and traumatized women are retraumatized all the time.
Jamie, a theology student, walks around with a plastic water bottle wherever one is allowed. She is terrified she won’t be able to pee and will be sent to segregation. She’s been there many times.
Jamie came to prison in 2000 as an addict who grew up in foster care. As a teen, she was forced to submit urine samples at home. Her parole officer would come over with a cup; she would go in the bathroom. If she couldn’t produce, her parole officer would come back later. It was different in prison. When she couldn’t produce a sample on demand, the penalty was 30 days in seg. If her sample was positive, she would do 45 days. Staff would continue to force UAs on her in seg.
Eventually, Jamie was shipped out to another prison in Lusk, Wyoming, WYDOC Wyoming Women’s Center. She’s been there for a few years. In Wyoming, people are informed about UAs ahead of time, so they can drink fluids to prepare and notify staff when they are ready — a small dignity for Jamie.
Indignities continue here in Minnesota, and they spare no one.
Christine, a mother and retired mortgage broker, is legally blind; she can only identify shapes. While she can walk, she is usually in a wheelchair and pushed where she needs to be so she doesn’t hurt herself or get lost. She asked if she could have a guide dog but was told no. When we lived in the same unit, I helped her fill out forms. l have heard her being yelled at for having baby powder on her cell’s floor. She simply can’t see it.
When she needed to be taken to a neuro-ophthalmologist at the University of Minnesota, she was stripped at intake. Per protocol, the door was left open. A male officer was pacing just outside. As she was being stripped, she tossed her underwear “too close” to the guard and was told off for it. Christine has no depth perception.
After that, she was shackled in full restraints — in handcuffs and ankle shackles. This was frightening for her. It is hard enough to move while wearing shackles if you have your eyesight. l can’t imagine how it feels for her. She uses her hands to help her navigate when she moves. When we spoke about the experience, she told me it was “humiliating. Desensitizing.”
I also spoke to Alice, a mother and grandmother who worked as a retail manager. She is allergic to most pain medications. She always tests positive for fentanyl and K2 even though she’s not on them because she takes the medications Hydrazine and Buspar. These are known to trigger positive results on drug tests. This information can be found in her prison medical folder. It doesn’t matter — when she was pulled for a random UA, no one checked her medical folder.
Alice sat in segregation for six days to wait for lab tests to show it was a false positive. The guards refused to give her her reading glasses until day five, even though she asked for them every day. They were in a bucket across from the segregation front desk.
Medical needs create more opportunities for trauma through UAs and strip searches. To go to the hospital or clinic, we are subjected to a full strip search before changing into orange scrubs and being shackled and handcuffed. Our wrists are then chained through a “cuff box” that sits between our hands.
It is counterproductive to conduct strip searches, to humiliate and traumatize us, to treat us with no care. To ignore us.
At the time I interviewed her, Dani had already served 15 months of a 126-month sentence. Though only 40, the mother of two, who worked as a welder, is dealing with serious health issues. She had a heart attack within days of arrival, pain shooting through her hips, and has breast cancer, which runs in her family.
When Dani’s heart stopped, she collapsed onto the floor of her cell, splitting the back of her head open. She was left bleeding in the room for an hour. She has been to the hospital two times in the last six months, has seen cardiologists and gotten CAT scans on five different occasions. This means she has been stripped multiple times — it’s required.
During quarantine, Dani went out on several writs to the Stearns County Jail. Every writ involved strips before and after she arrived at the jail, and two more when she left County and came back to prison. When she spent overnight in the jail, she was in a cell with no pillow, no blanket, and staples in her head. On one occasion, she was taken on a medical off-grounds appointment upon her return from County. This meant eight strips in a single day.
Dani is a victim of other sexual trauma. She told me, “I feel trauma-triggered during strips. There was a male officer outside the door during the UA. I could see him in the holding room mirror. If I could see him, he could see me. I reported this and told them I felt traumatized.” The only response to her complaint was that she could get the next day off from work. They told her, “Take a mental health day.”
Divina, a property manager and mother of two, has bone cancer and is frequently taken off grounds. When I spoke with Divina, we were outside in the courtyard, sitting on a cement ledge. She loves to sit in the sun. A small freedom.
Divina told me she has trouble peeing if someone is even close, much less staring at her. She takes medically prescribed laxatives due to her condition and said she has literally shit on the hand holding the pee cup while trying to provide a urine sample. To make matters worse, she was not given any water to wash it off. Three officers were present. All refused to give her water. She was given a paper towel and told she could wash up after she got to seg.
“It’s more than just trying to pee on demand,” she says, “it’s all the added indignities that happen during and afterward.”
In segregation, we are given one tiny 1.25-ounce bar of soap. When Divina asked for more, she was told to order it. But we can only order on Sundays, and it takes 10 days to receive our orders. If we were to go to seg on a Monday, we wouldn’t get more soap for at least 15 days. No extra soap? She has cancer. Can she get some soap?
No.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The prison officials do not have to use strip searches before they allow us to receive medical attention. We’ve had a body scanner since the summer, but it is rarely used.
Normally, Divina is stripped before she goes to an appointment. But in July, she was body-scanned instead. So was Dani that same month.
These were the encouraging signs — a new policy! — until I was called for a visitation on a recent Saturday. It used to be policy that we were stripped for every in-person visit, even though there was video monitoring of the room and a prohibition on physical contact with visitors except for a brief hug and a kiss on the cheek for greeting and parting. We’re not even allowed to move out of our chairs.
While waiting to get patted down before going into the meeting room, the woman next to me asked the guard if we were getting stripped. We were told that we weren’t; we could use the scanner, but only because this particular guard is trained on the scanner.
When I asked why only a few people are trained on the body scanner, the guard told me, “Because that’s what the captain decided. It’s the captain’s decision.”
The prison makes a choice to treat us this way. There are other ways. We have the technology to give a mouth swab or blood or hair test. At minimum, we should be able to pee alone without guards standing over us. As incarcerated people, it would be impossible for us to alter our samples; we’re given no warning, we are stripped, and we are in a room with no running water.
Minnesota’s UA policies are inconsistent across facilities. Minnesota Security Hospital, for instance, gives people eight hours to produce samples. During this time, residents are allowed to leave the testing area to access their rooms and hydrate; the resident notifies staff when they are able to produce. Juvenile centers conduct testing with swabs.
In May 2022, I started a personal campaign to change the UA and strip policies because I felt they were wrong and were hurting a lot of people. I was a little nervous about putting myself out there, but as we have to go through a chain of command, attaching all previous correspondence to the new one, I was doing nothing underhanded. I was using their system. This is how it went:
I spoke with my unit’s lieutenant, who told me to write up what we talked about concerning the random UA policy, and he would look into it.
I wrote to my unit’s lieutenant. No response.
I wrote to the head of discipline. She wrote back three days later, All policies were followed.
I wrote to the prison’s ombudsperson. She wrote back a month later, All policies were followed. She also said, Swabbing would be too expensive (but would not say how much it would cost).
I wrote to the assistant warden of operations in July 2022. She wrote back a month later that she would forward my letter to the DOC chair of policy change. No response.
I wrote to the commissioner on June 9, 2023. No response.
And that was it. I went up the chain of command, and I was ignored. It is discouraging and sad. If the goal of the justice system is to create subjects of the state willing to contribute to their community upon discharge, it is counterproductive to conduct strip searches, to humiliate and traumatize us, to treat us with no care. To ignore us.
Like so many violations endured by incarcerated people, UA testing is justified as necessary for the “safety and security” of prisons. But what I and other women have experienced countless times is not a security measure. It is assault. It is a violation of human bodies and human dignity. Whatever else it does, incarceration should not involve being continually, methodically, and deliberately assaulted.
Elizabeth Hawes is a comic, an actor, and a recipient of several PEN Prison Writing Awards. She is also the recipient of the Fielding A. Dawson Prize and the 2023 Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize with the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism. Her work can be found in Prism, Santa Clara Review, Black Lipstick, and The Rumpus.
This story was reported with support from Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting Project.
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