A radical feminist analysis of women's experiences of body-searching in prisons in England

Despite changes to strip searching policy as spearheaded by the Corston Report (2007), there is limited academic research regarding women's experiences of body-searching within prisons in England. In order to address this gap in knowledge, this research was concerned with a radical feminist analysis of women's experiences of body-searching within prisons in England. To this end, the research was focussed upon an analysis of four key searching practices: strip-searching, intimate-searching, rub-down-searching, and searches using technology. In order to achieve the aims of the thesis, the research adopted a radical feminist theoretical lens concerned specifically upon the salience of gender to imprisoned women's experiences. Furthermore, a feminist theory of sexual violence and the state was implemented in order to understand the institution of the prison within the broader context of patriarchal society. A feminist epistemological and methodological perspective was also utilised within the research, which placed women's narratives as central to the thesis and the production of knowledge. The research utilised a qualitative methodological approach and conducted eighteen interviews with formerly imprisoned women with experience of being body searched and professionals with knowledge of women's imprisonment and body-searching. Additionally, an analysis of official policy documentation regarding the practices of body-searching within HM Prisons was undertaken. Through the course of the thesis, the state's legitimisation of body-searching practices have been exposed, and women's testimonies have countered official justifications of body-searching, which have demonstrated significant discrepancies between the so called "purpose" of body-searching and the reality of its effects. As such, this thesis has demonstrated that coercion, punishment, power and discipline are at the heart of official discourse regarding body-searching, as opposed to security, safety and good order. The thesis has argued, through the adoption of radical feminist theory, that body-searching can be understood within women's prisons in England as a mechanism of state-inflicted, patriarchal sexual violence, which seeks to control women in line with socially acceptable norms of gender and femininity. The arguments developed within this thesis have contributed to an understanding of not only women's experience of body-searching, but also the ways in which women use their own bodies to resist the powers of the prison. Furthermore, "alternative" methods of body-searching have been explored, and this thesis has determined that these methods in fact act as pervasive forms of control and punishment of women, and further entrench punitivity within society's response to female "deviance" and act against abolitionist goals. Overall, this research has acted as a platform for marginalised women to express their experience of patriarchal state sexual violence, and practical recommendations have been made regarding the future of body-searching.