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Sex & Surveillance: Gender, Privacy & The Sexualization Of Power In Prison, Teresa A. Miller

Journal Articles

In prison, surveillance is power and power is sexualized. Sex and surveillance, therefore, are profoundly linked. Whereas numerous penal scholars from Bentham to Foucault have theorized the force inherent in the visual monitoring of prisoners, the sexualization of power and the relationship between sex and surveillance is more academically obscure. This article criticizes the failure of federal courts to consider the strong and complex relationship between sex and surveillance in analyzing the constitutionality of prison searches, specifically, cross-gender searches.

The analysis proceeds in four parts. Part One introduces the issues posed by sex and surveillance. Part Two describes the sexually …