If You're An Attorney That Wants To See Your Client, Please Take Off Your Bra

There is just no end to the ways in which jail is dehumanizing.

The latest insult from the penal state comes from the Jackson County, Missouri Detention Center. Women attorneys who have business at the jail are complaining that, due to new security measures, to get into the jail to speak with their clients they have to remove their underwire bras.

Say whaaaaa?

Yes, in order to do their jobs, women have to take off their underwear.

Attorney Laurie Snell told KCUR how it all went down:

After setting off the alarm a few times, she said she removed her jewelry and glasses, but it still went off.

“I said, ‘Well, there’s nothing else. There’s no other metal except my underwire bra.’ And he said, ‘You have to pass through security,'” Snell said.

She said the supervisor told her there were no exceptions. So, she went to the bathroom, took off her bra, placed it in the bin and passed through the detector. Once inside, she said she had nowhere to go to put it back on, so she did so in the elevator on the way to her client.

Jackson County Sheriff Darryl Forté took to Twitter to refute the story:

But Snell is pretty clear that the meaning was conveyed, even if those words were not said:

“Technically, was I asked to remove my bra? No. But officially, did I have to make a choice? Yeah. Because I’m doing my job, and I only have so much time. And that’s not fair,” she said.

Snell isn’t the only one raising the alarm over the jail’s new practices. In a hearing about the public defender caseload, District Public Defender Ruth Petsch told Presiding Judge David Byrn:

“The jail won’t let in half my staff because they have the wrong underwear.”

UPDATE: An earlier version of the story indicated Judge Byrn suggested the attorneys purchase new bras. However, the source publication, KCUR, has updated their story after review of the court transcript:

Byrn seemed skeptical. He noted that the new policy applied to everyone, including employees and himself.

“But don’t you think that probably every other female over there has figured out a way to get in without that being an issue,” Byrn said, according to a court transcript. “I don’t understand why that’s just impeding your people cause nobody else is having a problem with it?”

As Petsch told Judge Byrn, some of the women in her office simply can’t afford to change their bra wardrobe because of the new procedures. (And do you have any idea how many Uber rides it would take to afford a single new non-underwire bra?) Plus Petsch said she was simply uncomfortable forcing employees to get new underwear as a condition of employment. Which, ya know, fair.

And it’s not like non-underwire bras can uniquely stop a motivated party from trying to smuggle something into a jail. This policy just impacts women who regularly wear tiny pieces of metal as part of their underwear for almost no benefit to the jail security.

Also concerned about the policy is Jackson County Legislator Crystal Williams. She said she’s reviewing the new security policy, but that it’s clear there is “undue impact on women”:

“There are a lot of women who use underwire bras. I mean, it seems unseemly that we’re discussing this, it really shouldn’t be, but this is just their underwear. There are women that must use these products,” Williams said.
….
“If a man takes his belt off when he goes through that and his pants don’t fall down, he’s good to go. What are you going to do about a bra that you have to wear? It makes no sense. And it feels sexist and arbitrary,” she said. “There has to be a workaround.”

Listen, courthouses and prisons around the country are able to deal with the “threat” of underwire bras without forcing women to disrobe. Jackson County needs to get on board.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).