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This chapter aims to examine the ways in which gender has featured in Hong Kong’s prison system from its colonial origins to its contemporary form as a politically autonomous region of China. We conclude with a discussion on the reasons for these recent trends of imprisonment.

We draw from the concepts of patriarchy and colonialism to examine how gender has operated and shaped Hong Kong’s prison system. Our analysis is based on historical and contemporary government reports and other documents and secondary data.

Similar to other locales around the world, Hong Kong’s prison system was designed for and by men in its early colonial days, as expected given that most prisoners were male. Although a few prison administrators attempted to provide some programs for women and voiced concern over the conditions of women’s imprisonment to colonial authorities during the latter part of the 1800s, it was not until the 1930s that the first female prison was established. Since then, Hong Kong prison authorities have faced the challenge of a phenomenal and rapid growth in women’s imprisonment, which resulted in a historical reversal of shifting male prisoners to alternate accommodation to make room for their female counterparts.

This study is among the few which have examined how gender operates in the context of imprisonment in a colonial and postcolonial context. This chapter does this by examining how colonial authorities managed competing political debates about the purpose of punishment and cultural understandings of race and difference, and the limited recognition of gender and difference. It also examines how, in postcolonial Hong Kong, authorities have placed gender center stage and the reasons for this in coping and dealing with the growth in women’s imprisonment.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the work ability and employment history of Finnish female prisoners and their need for treatment.

The sample consisted of 101 female prisoners, with 309 male prisoners for comparison. The methods included interviews, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM‐IV Axis I, II Disorders and medical examination including ICD‐10 diagnoses.

Among women, 78 per cent were unemployed and only 6 percent were employed whereas among men, the proportion of those employed was four times greater than for women. Of women, 42 per cent were unable to work; of men 11 per cent. Substance abuse disorders were the most common reason for impaired work ability (over 70 per cent in both genders). Among women, other mental disorders were the second most common reason (39 per cent), somatic diseases caused impairment in 23 per cent. Basic socio‐demographic factors were not associated with impaired work ability among women. Violent crime as the present main offence was significantly more common among prisoners with limited working capacity. Need for treatment was found in 94 per cent of women and 90 per cent of men. In both genders, the majority of treatment needs were for mental disorders. Finnish female prisoners have serious problems with substance abuse, of both alcohol and drugs, which impairs their work ability, employability and is the cause of their need for treatment. In addition, female prisoners have other mental disorders commonly complicating their situation.

This paper is a part of the first comprehensive health study of Finnish female prisoners.

Transgender prisoners are subject to violence of many kinds. They are tortured, beaten, sexually assaulted, raped, and denied access to qualified public health services. This is because legal and justice systems in most countries disregard the unique conditions, needs, and requirements of transgender people. Transgender prisoners around the world suffer from mental health issues and lack of continuous access to sexual health services and hormone treatment. Like most countries in Southeast Asia, and regardless of a significantly large population of transgender prisoners, Thailand still provides no standard policies on how transgender prisoners should be managed, and transgender prisoners’ experiences remain under-researched. Through an anthropological and gendered lens, this chapter theoretically and practically examines transgender prisoners’ gendered life experiences behind bars in Thailand, debates transgender prisoners’ vulnerabilities and the myths behind them, identifies challenges around gendered-housing, analyses cultural nuances of Thai (trans)gender performativity in prisons, discusses the impact of heterosexual-binary prison management, and offers real-world policy recommendations, which are urgently needed by the Thai justice and correctional system.

In a health survey of Finnish prisoners in 2006, the authors aimed to study frequency and gender differences in childhood physical and sexual abuse, and the connections of maltreatment in childhood to substance abuse and mental health among female and male prisoners.

The sample consisted of 101 female prisoners, with 309 male prisoners for comparison. The subjects participated in a comprehensive field study consisting of several questionnaires, interviews, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM‐IV Axis I and II Disorders (SCID I, II) and a clinical medical examination including ICD‐10 diagnoses.

Both forms of abuse were more common among females than males (childhood physical abuse 25 per cent versus 15 per cent and childhood sexual abuse 32 per cent versus 7 per cent). Associations of childhood abuse with substance abuse and mental health were different among males and females. Family integrity was important only for males and in connection with drug dependence and antisocial personality disorder. The gender differences did not concur with those reported in studies on general populations.

This is a part of the first comprehensive health survey of Finnish prisoners.

Indonesian law provides prisoners with basic rights, including access to education, health care and nutrition. Yet, structural and institutional limitations, notably overcrowding and under-resourcing, prohibits penal institutions from fulfilling these commitments for female prisoners. The purpose of this paper is to explore their health concerns.

Six prisons and one detention centre were researched, comprising: female prisoners (n=69); clinical officers (six); clinic heads (seven); wardens (seven); heads of prisons (seven); and a Directorate representative. Data were collected through observation, focus group discussions, in-depth interviews and a semi-structured questionnaire. Raw data were transcribed and analysed thematically, adopting the General Principles of Grounded Theory.

Both “formal” and “informal” health-coping strategies were dependent upon a range of factors which determined access to treatment, medicines and other items procured both inside and outside of the prison, as well as referral services. Informal systems of support existed for women, especially in regard to pregnancy and raising of babies born in detention. Systems that maintain harmony within cell blocks were identified as an important informal coping strategy.

This research is important in informing policy and practice. There is a clear need for gender-sensitive legislative frameworks, penal policies and prison rules to ensure women's needs are addressed. The identified coping strategies were considered viable, but do not replace the need for a health system providing women prisoners with levels of care as available in the community, including commensurate budgeting, personnel, access and referral to more specialised external health services.

The purpose of this paper is to critically explore the importance of the experiences of female former combatants during the Irish Conflict, colloquially known as “The Troubles” and outline key moments of resistance for female political prisoners during their time at Armagh jail. The paper will situate the analysis within a Foucauldian framework drawing on theoretical tools for understanding power, resistance and subjectivity to contextualise and capture rich narratives and experiences. What makes a Foucauldian analysis of former female combatants of the Conflict so inspiring is how the animation and location of problems of knowledge as “pieces” of the larger contest between The State, institutions of power and its penal subjects (ex-female combatants as prisoners). The paper has demonstrated that the body exists through and in culture, the product of signs and meanings, of discourse and practices.

This is primarily qualitative methodology underpinned by Foucauldian theory. There were 28 women and 20 men interviewed in the course of this research came from across Ireland, some came from cities and others came from rural areas. Some had spent time in prisons in the UK and others served time in the Republic of Ireland or in the North of Ireland. Many prisoners experienced being on the run and all experienced levels of brutality at the hands of the State. Ethical approval was granted from the Queens University Research Committee.

This paper only examines the experiences of female ex-combatants and their narratives of imprisonment. What this paper clearly shows through the narratives of the women is the gendered nature of imprisonment and the role of power, resilience and resistance whilst in prison in Northern Ireland. The voices in this paper disturb and interrupt the silence surrounding the experiences of women political prisoners, who are a hidden population, whilst in prison.

In terms of research impact, this qualitative research is on the first of its kind to explore both the experiential and discursive narratives of female ex-combatants of the Irish Conflict. The impact and reach of the research illustrates how confinement revealed rich theoretical insights, drawing from Foucauldian theory, to examine the dialectical interplay between power and the subjective mobilisation of resistance practices of ex-combatants in prison in Northern Ireland. The wider point of prison policy and practice not meeting basic human rights or enhancing the quality of life of such prisoners reveals some of the dystopian features of current prison policy and lack of gender sensitivity to female combatants.

It is by prioritising the voices of the women combatants in this paper that it not only enables their re-positioning at the centre of the struggle, but also moves away methodologically from the more typical sole emphasis on structural conditions and political processes. Instead, prioritising the voices of the women combatants places the production of subjectivities and agencies at the centre, and explores their dialectical relationship to objective conditions and practical constraints.

It is clear from the voices of the female combatants and in their social engagement in the research that the prison experience was marked specifically by assaults on their femininity, to which they were the more vulnerable due to the emphasis on sexual modesty within their socialisation and within the ethno-nationalist iconography of femininity. The aggression directed against them seems, in part, to have been a form of gender-based sexual violence in direct retaliation for the threat posed to gender norms by their assumption of the (ostensibly more powerful) role as combatants. They countered this by methods which foregrounded their collective identity as soldiers and their identification with their male comrades in “the same struggle”.

This paper is one of the first to explore the importance of the experiences of female former combatants during the Northern Irish Conflict with specific reference to their experience of imprisonment. The aim of this significant paper is to situate the critical analysis grounded in Foucauldian theory drawing on theoretical tools of power, resistance and subjectivity in order to make sense of women’s experiences of conflict and imprisonment in Ireland. It is suggested that power and resistance need to be re-appropriated in order to examine such unique gendered experiences that have been hidden in mainstream criminological accounts of the Irish Conflict.

Prisons in the sub-Saharan African region face unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Malawi, the first prison system case of COVID-19 was notified in July 2020. While prison settings were included in the second domestic COVID-19 response plan within the Law Enforcement cluster (National COVID-19 preparedness and response plan, July–December 2020), they were initially not included in the K157bn (US$210m) COVID-19 fund. The purpose of the study was to assess prison preparedness, prevention and control of COVID-19 in Malawi..

A multi-method situation assessment of the COVID-19 response and human rights assurance of prisoners and staff was conducted in a large prison complex in Malawi. Qualitative research underpinned by the Empirical Phenomenological Psychological (EPP) framework consisted of interviews with key informants such as prison health personnel, senior prison staff, penal and judicial policymakers, government and civil society organisations (n = 14) and focus group discussions with consenting male (n = 48) and female prisoners (n = 48) and prison wardens (n = 24). Prison site visits were supported by detailed observations based on the World Health Organisation Checklist for COVID-19 in prisons (n = 9). Data were collected and analysed thematically using the EPP stepwise approach and triangulated based on Bronfenbrenner’s model conceptualising COVID-19 as a multi-level event disrupting the prison eco-system.

The results are presented as MICRO-MESO level individual and community experiences of incarceration during COVID-19 spanning several themes: awareness raising and knowledge of COVID-19 in prisons; prison congestion and the impossibility of social distancing; lack of adequate ventilation, hygiene and sanitation and provisions and correct use of personal protective equipment; MESO-MACRO level interplay between the prison community of prisoners and staff and judicial policy impacts; medical system COVID-19 response, infrastructure and access to health care; COVID-19 detection and quarantine measures and prisoner access to the outside world.

This unique situation assessment of the Malawian prison system response to mitigate COVID-19 illustrates the dynamics at the micro-level whereby prisoners rely on the state and have restricted agency in protecting themselves from disease. This is due to severe structural inadequacies based on low resource allocation to prisons leading to a compromised ability to prevent and treat disease; an infirm and congested infrastructure and bottlenecks in the judicial system fuelling a continued influx of remand detainees leading to high overcapacity. Multi-pronged interventions involving key stakeholders, with prison management and line Ministry as coordinators are warranted to optimise COVID-19 interventions and future disease outbreaks in the Malawian prison system.

In this chapter, we explore the lived experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) prisoners, arguably the most vulnerable minority in the prison estate, using the data from our correspondence study with transgender women and non-binary individuals incarcerated in male establishments in England and Wales. We provide a brief review of the extant literature, describe the English prison system and the regulations concerning transgender prisoners, and analyze two axes of vulnerability of TGNC prisoners: social (stemming from relationships between prisoners) and institutional (resulting from the prison regime). Along the social axes, we find, in contrast with prior research, that our respondents defied the stereotypes of trans prisoners as submissive to males in a hypermasculine prison society and as involved primarily in abusive relationships. Along the institutional axes, we find that, despite the progressive by international standards transgender prison regulations, prisoners were subject to vicissitudes in treatment that negatively affected their ability to express their gender and their health. Focusing on access to gender-affirming items (clothing, prosthetics, make-up) and gender-affirming medical treatment, we develop recommendations for the prison service that could improve the conditions of confinement for TGNC prisoners.

Prisoner access to opiate-based analgesics and gabapentinoids is a concern to prisons through illicit trading. The purpose of this paper is to describe patient needs following introduction of nine pilot chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) clinics for chronic pain in three prisons (two male and one female) in the South of England. The study evaluated the effectiveness of this model and assessed the wider practical implementation issues.

Clinical notes were reviewed for 63 consultations, anonymised and recorded for secondary analysis.

Alongside CNCP, high levels of substance misuse, physical and mental health histories were noted, especially for female patients. Amitriptyline, pregabalin, gabapentin were the main frontline analgesics prescribed prior to assessment. A total of 41 per cent of patients did not change their medication following the consultation; 25 per cent had their medication increased or reintroduced (greater for women prisoners); with one-third (33 per cent) of patients reducing the prescription of strong opioids and gabapentinoids. Significant differences were noted between male and female patients. Prisoners were amenable to changes in medication to facilitate access to work and other therapeutic interventions.

The prescribing of analgesics has largely been couched in terms of disruption to the prison regime through illicit trading. This study highlights the need to place CNCP within wider contexts of substance misuse, physical and emotional health. There is an opportunity to develop a rehabilitative rather than palliative approach to pain management. Gender specific approaches for female patients should be considered.

Few studies of CNCP have been conducted within a prison environment.

This study aims to provide an overview and quality appraisal of the current scientific evidence concerning the prevalence and characteristics of mental and physical disorders among sentenced female prisoners.

A mixed-methods systematic literature review.

A total of 4 reviews and 39 single studies met the inclusion criteria for the review. Mental disorders were the main area of investigation in the majority of single studies, with substance abuse, particularly drug abuse, as the most consistently gender biased disorder, with higher prevalence among women than men in prison. The review identified a lack of updated systematic evidence on the presence of multi-morbidity.

This study provides an up-to-date overview and quality appraisal of the current scientific evidence concerning the prevalence and characteristics of mental and physical disorders among female prisoners.