§ Miss Maynardasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1) what are the most recent figures for the numbers of strip searches in Armagh prison; and how many are being carried out on each woman;
(2) why some women in Armagh prison are being strip-searched more often than others.
§ Mr. McNamaraasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many strip searches were made of female prisoners in Her Majesty's prison, Armagh, in the months of January and February, respectively; if he will give the number of persons involved and the number of times each prisoner was searched; and whether any prison contraband, smuggled items or illegal correspondence was discovered in any of the searches, indicating which items and in how many cases prisoners refused to be so searched and had to be restrained whilst the search was being conducted.
§ Mr. Scott[pursuant to his reply, 21 March 1984, c. 496]: During January, 17 strip searches were carried out on 13 women prisoners. During February, 39 such searches were carried out on 21 women. Individual prisoners were searched the following number of times:
Number of prisoners Number of searches in each case January 4 2 9 1 February 2 4 1 3 10 2 8 1 No prohibited articles were found during these searches, and no prisoner refused to be searched.