Strip-search review for prisoners

The strip-searching of women prisoners is to be reviewed, a Home Office minister announced last night.

Joyce Quinn (left), the Prisons minister, said in a Parliamentary written answer that she had asked the Prison Service to review its policy and to look at whether there was a need for change. The issue of whether women prisoners should be treated differently from men should be considered, she told Lynne Jones, Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak. Current policy states that strip-searches should be carried out by officers the same sex as the inmate, although last month a woman prisoner at Highpoint Prison in Suffolk was strip-searched by four male officers after she threatened to kill herself; an inquiry into the incident is under way.