SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California uses a controversial method to recover contraband from inmates believed to have swallowed it or concealed it in body cavities: “potty watches,” during which inmates are handcuffed and shackled for days or even weeks while guards watch around-the-clock until nature takes its course.
Prison officials say the watches are necessary to recover weapons, cellphones and notes passed among inmates to coordinate illegal gang activities. Some recovered items seem truly bizarre: a can opener, hearing aids and an electric tattoo kit.
The watches have been used 1,200 times in the past 2½ years, yet state reports show that they produced results less than 41 percent of the time. Other large states have far less restrictive ways of searching for contraband.
“It was the worst two weeks of my life,” recalled Raymond Kidd, who was the subject of a contraband watch at Folsom State Prison for 13 days in 2011 that turned up nothing. “I had to be duct-taped and gift-wrapped and shackled, 24-7, even while I slept.”
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s inspector general reported procedural problems this spring in nearly half of the contraband watch cases his office reviewed.
Suspected smugglers are strip-searched, then placed in an isolation cell in which the toilet has been covered and the water turned off. Their clothing is taped shut at the waist and legs to prevent them from physically reaching body cavities, their hands are cuffed to a chain around their waist and their legs may be shackled. If they fight back, they can be strapped down by the arms and legs. “Hand-isolation devices” — similar to oven mitts — can be used with a warden’s approval.
There they stay for at least 72 hours or until they complete at least three closely watched bowel movements and a guard searches through the results. Something is recovered from about four out of 10 inmates.
“It’s a fairly low percentage, and people who aren’t guilty are being put through torture,” said Laura Magnani, an American Friends Service Committee program director who sits on a committee that mediates between the prison system and inmates.
Inmates are restrained to keep them from reswallowing items, and inmates can prolong things by refusing to eat, department spokesman Jeffrey Callison said.
“We still have to have some way to determine if inmates have something in their bodies or they don’t,” Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said in an interview. He said the department has reduced the number of watches in recent years and is exploring scanning technology that could one day replace them.
California is the only state to chain inmates while they are in isolation cells.
