ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to undertake a detailed analysis of a particular technology that incites, extracts, distributes and institutionalizes a legal discourse of the male body in its genital relations with other male bodies. This machinery takes the form of a particular collection of techniques of investigation and detection that are deployed in a particular way: plain-clothes police operations in public conveniences.1 Plain-clothes police operations are of importance for many reasons. They form a collection of techniques of policing that is said to have particular strengths. First, their strength lies in the fact that they are perhaps one of the most effective means of investigation and detection of certain criminal genital acts2 between men. They give full and immediate access to the men who perform these acts (Humphreys 1970:25). Second, it is a technique of policing that is particularly efficient. Unlike low technological surveillance in public conveniences (which involves watching and invisibility by means of physical absence: spy holes, two-way mirrors, etc.), which might require extended periods of surveillance,3
the use of the plain-clothes officer as agent provocateur need not necessitate long hours of duty (sometimes in cramped conditions) by men who may be needed elsewhere. In formal terms its success lies in the fact that it produces a high arrest rate over short periods of time, elicits ready confessions and guilty pleas, and meets with little resistance.4
