Turning over a new leaf::The health-enabling capacities of nature contact in prison

In this paper we explore the potential applicability of evidence of health-enabling effects of elements of the built environment – particularly access to nature – deriving from research in healthcare facilities to evidence-based design in the custodial context. Drawing on comparative qualitative research conducted in the UK and the Nordic region, we argue that although available data lack direct comparability, there is evidence that access to nature generates the same health-enabling effects in custody as are recognised in healthcare facilities. Reflecting on the differing political contexts of imprisonment in the two study areas, we conclude by advocating further research both to better understand health-enabling elements of the custodial built environment, and to better enable robust findings from healthcare facilities to be applied in custodial contexts

Drill, discipline and decency? Exploring the significance of prior military experience for prison staff culture

Building on prior theorization of the prison–military complex and critiques of Foucault’s claim of similarities between the prison and the military, this article uses the example of ex-military personnel as prison staff to consider the nature of this relationship. In a UK context in which policy discourse speaks of ‘military’ methods as an aspiration for the Prison Service but where critical prison scholars use this term more pejoratively, it draws on a unique survey of current and former prison staff to explore the perceived characteristics of ex-military personnel, and the relationship between military service and prison staff culture. The article finds that although some ‘military’ characteristics recall more negative ‘traditional’ cultures, others point towards more professional and compassionate attitudes, challenging the notion that ‘militarism’ necessarily engenders authoritarian and punitive prison regimes.</p

Just add water:prisons, therapeutic landscapes and healthy blue space

‘Healthy prisons’ is a well-established concept in criminology and prison studies. As a guiding principle to prisoners’ quality of life, it goes back to the 18th century when prison reformer John Howard regarded the improvement of ventilation and hygiene as being essential in the quest for religious penitence and moral reform. In more recent, times, the notion of the ‘healthy prison’ has been more commonly associated with that which is ‘just’ and ‘decent’, rather than what is healthy in a medical or therapeutic sense. This article interrogates the ‘healthy prison’ more literally. Drawing on data gathered from a UK prison located on a seashore, our aim is to explore prisoners’ rational and visceral responses to water in a setting where the very nature of enforced residence can have negative effects on mental health. In expanding the possibilities for the theorization of the health benefits that waterscapes may generate, and moving the discussion from healthy ‘green space’ to healthy ‘blue space’, the article reveals some of the less well-known and under-researched interconnections between therapeutic and carceral geographies, and criminological studies of imprisonment

Conceptualising the Carceral in Carceral Geography

Carceral geography has yet to define the ‘carceral’, with implications for its own development, its potential synergies within and beyond geography, and effective critique of the carceral ‘turn’. A range of explicatory alternatives are open, including continued expansive engagement with the carceral, and attendance to compact and diffuse carceral models. We trace the origins of the term ‘carceral’, its expansive definition after Foucault, the apparent carceral/prison symbiosis, and the extant diversity of carceral geography. We advance for debate, as a step towards its critical appraisal, a series of ‘carceral conditions’ that bear on the nature and quality of carcerality