Decision banning intimate searches makes prisons vulnerable to the clandestine entry of items such as cell phones and drugs| Photo: Edwirges Nogueira/Agência Brasil

This Friday (19), ministers of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) formed a majority to annul strip searches of visitors to prisoners in the Brazilian prison system. Most justices followed the vote of Minister Edson Fachin, who argued that the intimate search is unconstitutional and that the evidence obtained by the procedure generates illegal evidence.

“It is inadmissible the vexatious practice of the intimate search in social visits in establishments of compulsory segregation, forbidden in any form or way the stripping of visitors and the abominable inspection of their body cavities, and the evidence obtained from it is illicit, not fitting as excuses the absence of electronic and radioscopic equipment”, said the minister.

The Court determined that the absence of equipment for detecting the entry of objects in prisons does not justify carrying out intimate searches. In practice, prisons that do not have such mechanisms will be even more vulnerable to the clandestine entry of items such as cell phones and drugs into prisons. In parallel, the ministers decided that evidence obtained from the procedure cannot be used in possible criminal proceedings.