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High rates of suicide and self-harm are reported in prisons in Western countries, while fewer studies exist from a non-Western context. This study aims to identify rates of suicide, non-fatal suicide attempts and self-harm in Moroccan prisons and to better understand the context, methods, tools, predictors and profile of persons engaged in the acts.

The authors report findings from a mixed-methods study carried out before an intervention project. The study consists of a systematic literature review, an analysis of suicide case files, a quantitative survey on suicide attempts and self-harm, as well as interviews and focus group discussions. The authors calculate suicide, suicide attempt and self-harm rates and present descriptive data on the incidents. The authors use regression models to explore the association between the number of incidents per individual and selected predictors, adjusting for clustering by institution.

Over a four-year period, 29 detained persons in Morocco died by suicide (average annual suicide rate 8.7 per 100,000). Most were men under the age of 30. Hanging accounted for all but one case. In one year, 230 suicide attempts were reported. Over a three-months period, 110 self-harm cases were reported from 18 institutions, cutting being the most common method. Self-harm was significantly more prevalent among persons with a life sentence or repeated incarcerations.

To make the study manageable as part of an intervention project, the authors collected data on suicides and suicide attempts from all prisons, while data on self-harm were collected from fewer prisons and over a shorter time period. The authors did not collect comparable information from detained persons who did not die by suicide, attempt suicide or self-harm. This prevented comparative analyses. Further, it is possible that self-harm cases were not reported if they did not result in serious physical injury. Data were collected by prison staff; thus, the voice of incarcerated persons is absent.

This study provided a solid basis for designing an intervention project including the development of a national prison policy and guidelines on suicides, suicide attempts and self-harm and a country-wide training program for prison staff. It also led to a better surveillance system, allowing for trend analysis and better-informed policymaking. The qualitative results helped create an understanding of how staff may trivialize self-harm. This was integrated into the training package for staff, resulting in the creation of prison staff trainers who became the strongest advocates against the notion that self-harm was best ignored.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first published data on suicide and self-harm in Moroccan prisons. It underscores the necessity for the intervention project and gives valuable insights into suicide and self-harm in a non-Western prison context. Further research is needed to assess whether the findings are typical of the region.

Globally, health problems are very common among prisoners. A mental state examination aims to help in recognising psychiatric problems among offenders and the possible association of these psychiatric issues with their committed crime. The legal-medical term “reduced criminal responsibility” refers to a weakened sense of reality and the ability to control one’s behaviour because of compromised mental health and without an evaluated need for forensic psychiatric hospitalisation. However, little is known about the actual need for the health care of prisoners with reduced criminal responsibility (PRCR). The purpose of this study was to explore treatment-related visits to prison by PRCR in Finland.

The research data comprise information on PRCR’s treatment-related visits and that of a matched control group (n = 222). Descriptive cross-tabulation with X²- and nonparametric Mann–Whitney U-tests and Cox regression analyses are applied.

The results show that almost every PRCR had at least one treatment-related visit during their sentences. Visits to a psychiatric hospital for prisoners, to the prison hospital and especially to a civil hospital are more common among PRCR. The need for treatment appears significantly earlier in their sentences.

These findings demonstrate the PRCR’s greater need for access to health services and the need for further development between the Health Care Services for Prisoners, Prison and Probation Service of Finland and public health and social services in Finland. More exploration of the medical reasons and locational distribution of the vast amount of civil hospitalisation is needed.

This chapter examines the prisoners’ strike which took place throughout Great Britain in August 1972. The strike, the first of its kind in British penal history, took place against a background of sub-standard conditions in British prisons, with an outdated prison estate, overcrowding, ‘slopping out’, and a prison department preoccupied with secrecy. The strike was not a sporadic protest, rather it occurred during a year of social and political unrest both inside and outside prisons, and was led by an organisation of prisoners and ex-prisoners – the Union for the Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners (PROP). While the government recognised the need for improvements in prison conditions, it refused to recognise the right of prisoners to organise. An analysis of the 1972 strike and the role of PROP can inform contemporary penal reform and abolitionist debates among scholars, practitioners, activists, prisoners and ex-prisoners.

The Scandinavian penal exceptionalism literature has focused largely on imprisonment but has yet to explore other aspects of the penal field in detail. This chapter provides an overview of the penal field in Norway and how community sanctions and measures have evolved within it. The author uses the work of Wacquant and Bourdieu to argue that there are three important levels within the Norwegian penal field: political, policy and practice. The author also discusses how drivers from the political and policy levels are affecting community-based penal practice. Using McNeill’s dimensions of mass supervision, the author discusses the implications of these changes for three less-explored aspects of punishment in Norway: the serving of short sentences at home on electronic monitoring, supervision of people under 18 and ‘punishment debt’ enforcement.

This study aims to assess the nature and scope of dog-based programmes in prisons, assessing critically the potential opportunities, benefits, challenges and risks of developing innovative dog-based programmes for older prisoners in England and Wales. This paper outlines the potential benefits and challenges of developing dog-based programmes for older prisoners and sets out next steps for future research and practice.

This study is based on a scoping review of published research literature on prison dog programmes (PDPs) in the USA, the UK and other countries, with particular reference to older people in prison, followed by semi-structured interviews with six members of an expert advisory group. The literature review and data from the qualitative interviews were analysed thematically.

There is a substantial body of published research literature which supports PDPs as having identifiable positive impacts for people and also dogs, and also published research which highlights the benefits to older people of dog ownership or participation in dog-based activities. However, much of this research is small-scale and qualitative, and it has been argued that there is a lack of a quantitative evidence base. This research concludes that findings from the literature review and the semi-structured interviews support further research and the creation of pilot projects to develop dog-based projects for older people in prison.

This study was small-scale, and the findings need to be approached with caution. The literature review searched a small number of databases and filtered out articles published in languages other than English, and the review of the grey literature focused on reports from the UK. The number of experts interviewed was small and there was no direct consultation with older people in prison nor with older people with recent personal lived experience of imprisonment and community resettlement. A more extensive future study would benefit from a more extensive literature review, a larger group of participants and the inclusion of service users, prison managers and government policymakers, subject to the appropriate ethical and security approvals. At the time the research took place, ongoing COVID-19 restrictions on prison research meant that research with current prisoners and prison managers would not have been approved by the HMPPS NRC.

This research provides a research-based justification for future dog projects for older prisoners, leading potentially to improved well-being for older people in prison.

This study brings together the published research literature on PDPs with the research literature on the needs and experiences of older people in prison for the first time, and identifies potential directions for future research.

The struggle against torture and institutional violence has to be practiced in numerous scenarios: in the very places of deprivation of liberty, against workers, administrations and judges who try to hide it or justify it, but also, it’s a struggle against an academy that, too often, has decided to look the other way. In order to be activist, criminology must leave the classroom and enter the places of deprivation of liberty. It must engage with victims and survivors and it has to make political and social denunciations, organising itself and weaving networks with other social organisations that fight for the same goal. Unfortunately, it also has to fight against the very obstacles that the criminal justice system institutions pose; the denunciations and persecution of these same institutions and some police and prison workers groups and unions; the dirty war against terrorism and political dissent; and the criminalisation of some mass media and also of the academic world, where activism against this phenomenon is a minority and marginalised. These two sides of the same coin, involvement in anti-torture activist movements, as well as persecution and criminalisation when challenging state power, is what the authors of this chapter have experienced in Catalonia and Spain. While we fight against torture outside the classroom, we also carry out activism inside the classroom, teaching what other academics do not want to engage with, and pointing out the political elements of criminology and the action of the penal system. In this chapter, the authors highlight the use of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in custody and prison, and in the context of police activity in Spain. Then, the authors explain the structures of denial (political, judicial and academic) that allow its perpetuation and impunity. The text ends with a journey through the configuration of activist criminology in Spain that unites critical analysis from a legal sociology perspective with collective and activist intervention.

This paper aims to report findings about how prisoners experience and cope with COVID-19 restrictions, which can contribute to an understanding of how pandemic responses, and specifically the COVID-19 response, affect prisoners.

Data was collected through ethnographic fieldwork involving days of observations (N = 24) and the conduction of semi-structured interviews with prisoners (N = 30) in closed prisons and detentions in Denmark between May and December 2021. The transcribed interviews and field notes were processed and coded by using the software programme NVivo.

The data analysis reveals that the pains of imprisonment have been exacerbated to people incarcerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. To relieve pains of imprisonment, prisoners turn to censoriousness as an informal coping strategy, where they complain about inconsistency and injustice in the prison’s COVID-19 prevention strategy to reveal the prison system itself as a rule-breaking institution. The prisoners criticise the prison management for using COVID-19 as an excuse, treating prisoners unjustly or not upholding the COVID-19 rules and human rights. Furthermore, principles of justice and equality are also alleged by some prisoners who contemplate the difficulty in treating all prisoners the same.

More research will be needed to create a full picture of how prisoners cope with pandemic responses. Further research could include interviews with people working inside prisons.

In a Scandinavian context, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to apply an ethnographic approach in exploring prison life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first prison system case in Zimbabwe was notified in July 2020 shortly after State declaration of disaster. A legal-realist assessment was conducted of the Zimbabwean correctional system response to COVID-19 during state disaster measures, with a focus on assessing right to health, infectious disease mitigation and the extent to which minimum state obligations complied with human and health rights standards.

The Zimbabwean correctional system operations during COVID-19 disaster measures are scrutinized using a range of international, African and domestic human rights instruments in relation to the right to health of prisoners. This study focused particularly on standards of care, environmental conditions of detention and right of access to health care.

Systemic poor standards of detention are observed, where prisoners experience power outages, water shortages and a lack of access to clean drinking water and water for ablution purposes, a severe lack of safe space and adequate ventilation, poor quality food and malnutrition and a lack of sufficient supply of food, medicines, clothing and bedding. Whilst access to health care of prisoners in Zimbabwe has greatly improved in recent times, the standard of care was severely stretched during COVID-19 due to lack of government resourcing and reliance on non-governmental organisation and faith-based organisations to support demand for personal protective equipment, disinfection products and medicines.

Prison conditions in Zimbabwe are conducive to chronic ill health and the spread of many transmissible diseases, not limited to COVID-19. The developed legal-realist account considers whether Zimbabwe had a culture of respect for the rule of law pertinent to human and health rights of those detained during COVID-19 disaster measures, and whether minimum standards of care were upheld.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of four different sport programs on various social and subjective health outcomes among prisoners.

Four different sport programs (endurance, strength, dance-like martial arts, soccer) were provided in 2020 and 2021 in a German prison. Participants completed paper-pencil surveys before and after the sport programs (n = 134 observations), including questions about potential social health (enjoyment of physical activity, interpersonal exchange, interpersonal trust, self-efficacy) and subjective health outcomes (health status, health satisfaction, well-being). Further information such as prisoner characteristics were added to the data.

Results of regression analyses show that the endurance program had a significant positive effect on interpersonal trust, while the soccer program had a negative effect. Subjective well-being increased significantly after the strength and the soccer program. The weekly sport hours before imprisonment had a positive association with enjoyment of physical activity and interpersonal exchange while being negatively related to health status and health satisfaction. Furthermore, the number of months of imprisonment before the survey, being a young offender, the prisoners’ body mass index, educational level and migration background were significantly associated with several social and subjective health outcomes.

This study analyzed the effects of different sport programs for prisoners on various social and subjective health outcomes, revealing differences across programs and outcomes. The findings suggest that sport can be a way to enhance prisoners’ social and subjective health, ultimately facilitating their rehabilitation process.