A persistent paradox: Strip-searching reform and the continuation of rights violations in Canadian women’s prisons

• In Event: PWG - Prison policies, human rights, and the treatment of vulnerable populations

Abstract

Despite decades of “rights-based” correctional reforms, the same problems persist for incarcerated women in Canada, and new problems have arisen. Institutional changes, while they may appear to protect prisoners’ rights, have often proven to reinforce the very issues they were meant to prevent. This paper investigates this contradictory cycle by addressing the following question: if Correctional Service Canada (CSC) claims to respond to rights-based recommendations, why do violations persist? To accomplish this, we consider the case study of strip searches in Canadian federal prisons for women. Strip-searching women prisoners is a controversial practice, which proponents widely consider a necessary act to prevent contraband in prisons and opponents widely consider a harmful mechanism of control. Most incarcerated women have histories of sexual abuse, and strip-searching presents routine opportunities for re-traumatization. Through a gendered discourse analysis of policy and legal documents as well as government and civil society reports, this paper synthesizes criminological and risk management theory to outline how CSC and external parties conceptualize the practice of strip searching in women’s prisons. We map how CSC seeks to manage critique of strip searching as an institutional risk through changes to procedure, which enables an over-reliance on security — the central issue underpinning most problems in women’s institutions — thereby reinforcing the original dilemma through more obscured and complex means. Understanding the nature of this discourse cycle is key to interrupting it. This paper helps clarify the requirements for effective rights-based change and anticipate the outcomes of more recent reforms, such as the use of body scanners.

Authors

• Lauren Ivy Borders, University of Toronto

• Kelly Hannah-Moffat, University of Toronto (Canada)

• Jihyun Kwon, University of Toronto (Canada)