AUGUSTA — At the Kennebec County Correctional Facility, strip-searches can be conducted on people arrested for violent, weapon-related or drug-related offenses, and when the person authorizing the search has “reasonable suspicion that the arrestee is concealing on or inside the arrestee’s body a weapon, contraband or evidence of a crime,” according to the written search procedures at the jail.

The strip-search also must be conducted by an officer of the same gender as the arrestee, according to the rules.

Such searches are intended to keep the jail contraband-free. The Kennebec County jail’s search procedure was revised most recently on Feb. 1, 2010.

— Betty Adams