As a young man incarcerated in the Department of Correction, Shakur Collins refused visits from his mother for about a year and a half, just to avoid having to be strip-searched.

“ What that does is just feed into the notion of disrupting filial and familiar relationships. And that’s intentional,” he told The Connecticut Mirror. 

Collins likened strip-searching, which he first experienced at age 13, to sexual assault, and said it was traumatizing. Collins, who is now 40, said the aftereffects are something he still deals with through therapy, even after having been released from DOC custody seven months ago. 

On Friday, the State Bond Commission approved funding for four body scanners as part of a pilot program with the aim of ending strip searches in the state’s prison facilities. 

State lawmakers have been discussing the purchase of body scanners for correctional facilities since at least 2023, when they asked Department of Correction Commissioner Angel Quiros to study the cost of implementing the scanners at each of the prisons.

Quiros told lawmakers in a March meeting that the cost of installing 26 body scanners for visiting rooms and intake units would cost about $4 million. An additional 15 for the lobby areas, plus 12 more for the Restrictive Housing Units, or solitary confinement, brings the cost up to $8.1 million. 

Earlier this session, lawmakers brought forward a bill that would have put aside $500,000 to purchase at least two body scanners for York Correctional Institution, which houses the state’s women, and Manson Youth Institution. The bill passed out of the Government Oversight Committee and the Finance Committee with bipartisan support, but never made it to a vote on the floor. 

The funding approved by the bond commission Friday will be used for scanners at the two facilities as part of a larger capital funds package instead.

Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, told CT Mirror that he believed the body scanners provided a more humane alternative to strip searches, which he called “dehumanizing” and “degrading,” particularly for women. He said the idea that the Department of Correction was doing hundreds of thousands of strip searches in a year “seems excessive.” 

“When you have the ability to do something different, which we do, we should avail ourselves of that,” he said. 

Advocates have been decrying the use of strip searches for years. In February, advocates reiterated their call at a press conference memorializing the 2018 death of J’Allen Jones, who died after being pepper sprayed, restrained, struck and forcibly moved by as many as nine correction workers. Jones had refused to submit to a strip search. 

Data showed that the department conducted about 355,000 strip searches on incarcerated people in 2024.

In meetings with the legislature’s budget committee in February and March, Quiros said he believed the body scanners were “100% better” than strip searches at identifying contraband. He said he supported the use of body scanners for department staff as well as the incarcerated population.

But Rudy Demiraj, a corrections officer and representative for the Cheshire Correctional Complex Employees AFSCME Local 387, the local union, said he wasn’t sure that body scanners would be as efficient in picking up contraband coming into the prison as strip searches. 

“ The officers are highly trained on how to conduct these strip searches, what it is they’re actually targeting and looking for,” said Demiraj. “And I don’t know of any technology with scanners that could detect or pick up every type of contraband that could potentially be picked up through a strip search.”

Demiraj said he understood that while some inmates might feel the strip searches were degrading, they were necessary for the security of the facility. 

And Demiraj said that the corrections officers union did not support having staff go through the body scanners. He said the majority of contraband came into the facility during social visits or through the mail, and not from corrections officers. 

Barbara Fair, the executive director of Stop Solitary, told CT Mirror that she doesn’t have a lot of faith that the body scanners will be installed. She also said having the body scanners would not be a big victory unless there was a requirement that staff, and not just incarcerated individuals or visitors, also had to pass through the scanners to enter the facilities. 

“I’m just really discouraged,” she said. 

Rep. Craig Fishbein, R-Wallingford, a top Republican on the state’s Judiciary Committee, called the promise for four scanners “a start, but a weak one.” He told CT Mirror in an email that if the state was really committed to the safety of the incarcerated and the corrections officers, it would invest in scanners in prisons other than the women’s prison and the juvenile prison. 

“We do see possession of contraband in our prisons, whether it be weapons or drugs, and they are getting in there somehow. One way to address this is through the use of these machines — an initiative that is supported by both the incarcerated as well as those in charge of them,” he said. 

Winfield said he knew the state wasn’t going to be able to purchase all the body cameras at once. He said that once the scanners were placed in the prisons, and the benefits became obvious, he didn’t see how the state wouldn’t continue installing scanners in other facilities.