ABSTRACT
Searching is basic to safe custody, and strip-searching may be required to counter certain types of concealment. The procedure is intrusive and undignified, and when applied to women can be controversial. Instances of items such as keys being smuggled into prison led to routine replacing random strip-searching at Armagh Prison. Since the prison served the courts and dealt with bail productions, this meant that a woman could be strip-searched twice in a day. This was seen as unnecessary and excessive and led to a more general campaign against the practice and to accusations of systematic and gratuitous degradation. Members of the Catholic clergy were prominent in these protests and raised concerns that female modesty was being violated. Persons who had been convicted of serious offences had been transformed into victims. The political cost exceeded the security gains, ministers concluded, and the earlier practice of random strip-searching was reinstituted.
