Health care in correctional settings: The health needs of women prisoners

Abstract

In the Italian scientific community, the sociology of health has seldom examined penitentiaries (Ronco, 2018), and even more rarely, the specific context of women’s prisons. While international literature offers broader insights (Kouyoumdjian et al., 2015), studies focused on women remain marginal and predominantly quantitative. This article addresses this gap by adopting a micro sociological perspective to examine the interactions shaping care and custody practices through the voices of incarcerated women. The empirical data stems from a year-long research project in a female section of an adult penitentiary in central-northern Italy. Employing a triangulation of methods — participant observation, document analysis, and discursive interviews — the study captures the narratives and strategies used by women to address their care needs (Sterchele, 2021). Despite the challenges of qualitative research in carceral settings (Sbraccia & Vianello, 2010), the findings highlight health as an urgent daily issue. In prison, women face intersecting layers of oppression: as detainees in a system designed for men (Rostaing, 2017), and as patients subjected to a medical authority that marginalizes "profane" knowledge (Pizzini, 1990). Furthermore, as female patients, they experience a specific medicalized gaze that differs significantly from the male experience (Carlen, 1983; Sim, 1990). Consequently, this study emphasizes the necessity of an intersectional and gender-specific lens to fully understand the carceral context. While prison paradoxically represents the first point of contact with continuous healthcare for some (Massaro, 2018), the environment remains structurally inadequate for female vulnerabilities (Pecorella, 2018).

Keywords: prison institution, correctional health care, women prisoners, women’s health, female bodies.