ABSTRACT
The OSP officials argue that privacy is an incongruous constitutional claim for prisoners in institutions whose very functions imply surveillance, while the prisoners invoke the concept of privacy in the sense in which bodily parts and functions are considered "private" in our and other cultures. Issues of dignity or embarrassment and indignity arising from sexual differences traditionally have been stated with a view of the rights of female prisoners. In brief, the prisoners' objections are to the imposition of a needless indignity, to an invasion of the prisoners' residuum of personal dignity that is an imposition insofar as it goes beyond recognized necessity. A psychologist employed at the prison estimated that perhaps a third of the prisoners considered the contacts involved in patdowns by female officers offensive. The prisoners' rights, like all constitutional rights, run against the state. Similarly, the officers' rights to equal employment opportunities are claims upon the state.
