Portland jail tells female attorneys to remove detector-triggering bras
Female attorneys are being forced to remove their underwire bras before they are allowed to meet with their inmate clients at the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, the Portland Press Herald reported Sept. 18.
“They are just inviting a lawsuit,” attorney Amy Fairfield told the paper. “It’s discriminatory, it’s harassing and it’s a constitutional issue.”
Fairfield said she went to the jail to meet with a client and was turned away by a Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy when her bra set off the metal detector and she refused to remove it. Fairfield said the deputy told her the new policy had been imposed by the jail administrator, Maj. John Costello. Fairfield said she tried to contact Costello, but he hadn’t responded to her yet. Fairfield told the newspaper she has reported the policy to Justice Roland Cole, the chief judge of Maine’s Superior Court, and wrote a letter to Sheriff Kevin Joyce on Thursday.
Joyce told the paper on Friday that it isn’t jail policy to make women take off their bras, but that the metal detector policy was made more stringent several months ago.
Joyce said he will review the policy.
“There is no way (for a metal detector) to differentiate people with underwire bras and someone bringing in a gun,” he told the paper.
Marilyn Thaxter, a spokeswoman for CEIA-USA, the manufacturer of the detector used at the jail, told the paper it’s not typical but not unprecedented for a small amount of metal to set off a detector.
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