My 22 year old daughter currently resides with our home. We are her parents. She is currently serving a 60 day sentence on home detention for a misdemeanor crime of residential entry. Yesterday while she was on an approved trip to the doctor, three officers showed up at my house and searched (ransacked) her room. My husband was home and gave them entry to the house. They told him it was a routine search and then they went into her room and shut the door and proceeded with their search. My question is this. If my husband had not been home, would it have been legal for them to enter the house and search the property? I believe that somewhere in her paperwork something was said about legal searches, but I thought it was referring to when the corrections officers come to check on her and search the house for alcohol or other illegal material. These corrections people in Jay County are being tyrants and she is about to have a mental breakdown. Please advise me if we have any rights in this matter, or did we sign them all over when she went on HA.

It depends on what the paperwork says. Have you browsed through the information in LawInfo's Free Legal Resource Center to learn more about your issue yet? See: http://www.lawinfo.com/consumer.html. You can certainly try to speak to a lawyer to determine what legal options may be available. In the meantime, you may be able to learn more on your own. Search the "Free Legal Resources" tab, or browse the Consumer Resources. Good luck.

I agree. The answer will be in her home detention paperwork which should explicitly outline the requirements. Typically, in order to participate, yes, random searches which include entry to the premises are required (which means she's considered to be living in a situation where she has the ability to GIVE such permission). If this isn't satisfactory to all parties concerned, she always has the option of NOT participating in the home version and instead choosing to finish out her sentence in the behind bars version.

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