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Prison social environments play an important role in the health of prisoners. How they respond to imprisonment is partially dependent upon how effectively they integrate into an institution’s social structure, learn to fit in with others and adapt to and cope with becoming detached from society, community and family ‐ hence, how they personally manage the transition from free society to a closed carceral community. This paper reports on findings of an ethnography conducted in an adult male training prison in England, which used participant observation, group interviewing, and one‐to‐one semi‐structured interviews with prisoners and prison officers. The research explored participants’ perceptions of imprisonment, particularly with regard to how they learned to adapt to and ‘survive’ in prison and their perceptions of how prison affected their mental, social and physical well‐being. It revealed that the social world of prison and a prisoner’s dislocation from society constitute two key areas of ‘deprivation’ that can have important health impacts.

This paper focuses on the mental health of adult male prisoners and the mental health care provided within Her Majesty's Prison Service (HMPS), United Kingdom (UK). Currently, the level of mental health need within this population is high, and prison mental health services require additional positive developments. The prison milieu is not always conducive to good mental health, and is not often a useful catalyst for mental health care. Arguably, prison mental health services ought to be increasingly fashioned (commissioned, provided, managed and practised) in direct accordance with the prison social environment, institutional set‐up and specific mental health requirements of prisoners/patients. In this paper, therefore, attention is devoted to social and institutional structures which permeate the prison setting. The proposition is that situation‐specific and culturally responsive mental health care is a must; context is crucial.

There is a strong political imperative to regard the prison as a key social setting for health promotion, but evidence indicates that drug misuse continues to be a significant issue for many prisoners. This paper aims to examine the social and environmental factors within the setting that influence individuals' drug taking.

Focus groups and interviews were conducted with prisoners and staff in three male training prisons in England. The sampling approach endeavoured to gain “maximum variation” so that a broad based understanding of the prison setting could be gathered. The data were analysed in accordance with Attride‐Stirling's thematic network approach.

The findings suggest a myriad of social and environmental factors influencing drug use. While staff recognised the scale of the drugs problem, they struggled to cope with creative inmates who were not perturbed by taking risks to gain their supplies. Fellow prisoners played a major role in individuals' decision making, as did the boredom of institutional life and Mandatory Drug Testing (MDT) policies within the institutions.

Drug treatment is an essential component of prison healthcare, but it only forms a small part of creating a health‐promoting setting. If the health‐promoting prison is to be fully realised, a more radical, upstream and holistic outlook is required.

The settings approach is an important theoretical and practical approach in health promotion. In comparison to other settings (such as schools), however, there has been limited research on the prison as a health‐promoting environment.

Gratitude is an element of positive psychology that has been found effective in improving subjective well-being and decreasing aggression in offenders. However, there is a dearth of studies on gratitude in ex-juvenile offenders. This study aims to explore the gratitude of ex-juvenile offenders using a photovoice technique.

Photos and stories behind pictures were collected from eight ex-juvenile offenders who reside in Kupang, Indonesia.

Thematic analysis resulted in four main themes: family as an oasis of gratitude, difficulty in social reintegration, strong peer support and gratitude and spirituality.

The results of this study indicated that family, peer support and intensive spiritual activities in prisons were influential in forming a sense of gratitude for ex-juvenile offenders. Interventions need to consider these three aspects to improve gratitude and resulting well-being in ex-juvenile offenders.

Greener on the Outside for Prisons (GOOP) is a therapeutic horticulture programme targeting the high levels of complex health and social care needs in prisons in England. The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns led to unprecedented disruption in prisons in England. This paper examines the experiences of prisoners both during and post-lockdowns in four prisons, to understand the effects of participation in GOOP on health and wellbeing after the disruption of restrictions, and identify implications for developing this programme further.

The paper is based on original qualitative data gathered from in-depth narrative-based interviews and focus groups with prisoners and staff in four English prisons. Audio data was transcribed and subject to a thematic analysis, drawing from a realist-informed lens.

Thematic analysis revealed five key themes: reimagining the GOOP context; increasing empathy between participants; building sense of coherence; reconnecting with nature and a joined-up connection with provider services. The main arguments centre on horticulture in prisons remaining under-utilised as a means of promoting good health and wellbeing, although there is enthusiasm from staff to provide green spaces for the most vulnerable prisoners and develop a range of mechanisms to connect people in prison with nature.

This paper focuses on new knowledge arising from an unprecedented situation in English prisons, from key stakeholders on the frontline of garden activities. Accounts demonstrate the extent of the health and wellbeing benefits of participation in such activities in this challenging environment, which has implications for practice for prisons more widely.

Ex-prisoners often experience negative stigma from society, making it difficult to find employment upon release. Prison institutions play an active role in building character and improving prisoners' skills by providing various empowerment programs to increase opportunities for their economic potential. However, these programs are considered not optimal in increasing the entrepreneurial intentions of prisoners. This study aims to identify the effects of prison entrepreneurship programs, entrepreneurial resilience and self-efficacy as drivers in increasing prisoners' entrepreneurial intentions. This study also examines the effect of these variables focusing on prisoners with neither entrepreneurial experience nor entrepreneurial training.

This study deployed a quantitative method by distributing a questionnaire to prisoners involved in talent and skill development activities (called BIMKER, an abbreviation in Indonesian, which means Work Guidance), a compulsory program provided by prison institutions. A total of 204 prisoners, including 70 with no entrepreneurial experience, completed the research questionnaire in one of the prison institutions in Indonesia. Partial least sequential-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used as the analytical technique.

The study findings show that the prison entrepreneurship program has not been able to influence prisoners' entrepreneurial intentions directly. However, the prison entrepreneurship program has a positive and significant effect on increasing prisoners' self-efficacy and entrepreneurial resilience that ultimately encourages the emergence of entrepreneurial intentions. Entrepreneurial resilience was found not to affect entrepreneurial intentions for prisoners with no entrepreneurial experience and who have never attended entrepreneurship training.

This study identifies the drivers of prisoners' entrepreneurial intentions, including prison entrepreneurship programs, self-efficacy and entrepreneurial resilience. These can be used as references to build understanding at the theoretical level and can be adopted practically. This study expands the social cognitive theory (SCT) and entrepreneurial intention models (EIMs) by adding new insights into the context of prison entrepreneurship that underline the potential of prisoners engaging in entrepreneurship, once released, to expand opportunities, learning and employment. This study highlights the importance of implementing prison entrepreneurship programs to reduce crime, recidivism rates, poverty and inequality.

This paper aims to explore qualitative semi‐structured interviews – conducted with NHS mental healthcare patients/prisoners located in one HM Prison Service (HMPS) establishment. The methodological reflections, whilst not directly related to the content of the interviews, seek to offer a debate about interview data in relation to the processes of their creation.

The dialogue is designed primarily for those who conduct, or have an interest in, mental health‐orientated research, particularly those who undertake studies in secure settings with mental health service users as participants.

Regarding interview method as a tool for data collection/creation, methodological foci for discussion include the structure of interview questions, participant unfamiliarity with the process, body language and non‐verbal communication, plus discussions concerning conversational turn‐taking and interviewee agency.

This article stems from a small‐scale empirical fieldwork study in one prison setting and offers a debate about interview data in secure settings with mental health service users.

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.

Prisons are uniquely challenging working environments. Staff are often exposed to direct and indirect trauma, impacting negatively on their mental well-being. Due to the limited research into prison staff experience, this paper aims to explore what staff find most challenging, how they cope, what support they would like and rewarding aspects of their work.

This service development project was facilitated through a staff well-being event. A qualitative approach was used and 74 staff members provided anonymised responses. An inductive and data-driven approach was used to analyse the data, and the trustworthiness of the analysis was considered using criteria established by Lincoln and Guba (1985).

Thematic analysis identified six themes, namely, the challenging nature of the work, interactions with prisoners, staff interactions, inadequate resources, staff support and development and coping strategies. Key findings include managing distress, self-harm and violence and limited resources presenting challenges. Role variety and opportunities to support prisoners were reported as positive. A variety of coping strategies were identified. Wider availability of supervision and reflective practice was suggested by staff.

Recommendations for increased staff support are made. Suggestions for future research investigating methods to increase rewarding aspects of work within prisons are given.

This analysis adds to the limited body of qualitative research investigating prison staff experiences; in particular, aspects of the work that they find rewarding such as the role variety and opportunities to make positive changes to prisoners’ lives. Novel coping strategies were identified, including cognitive reframing and behavioural strategies for managing stress, which could be encouraged to increase resilience.

Those in prison have expert knowledge of issues affecting their health and wellbeing. The purpose of this paper is to report on work undertaken with male prisoners. This paper presents learning and findings from the process of engaging imprisoned men as peer researchers.

The peer researcher approach offers an emic perspective to understand the experience of being in prison. The authors established the peer research role as an educational initiative at a long-stay prison in Wales, UK to determine the feasibility of engaging imprisoned men as peer researchers. Focus groups, interviews and questionnaires were used by the peer researchers to identify the health and wellbeing concerns of men in prison.

The project positively demonstrated the feasibility of engaging imprisoned men as peer researchers. Four recurring themes affecting health and wellbeing for men in a prison vulnerable persons unit were identified: communication, safety, respect and emotional needs. Themes were inextricably linked demonstrating the complex relationships between prison and health.

This was the first prison peer-research project to take place in Wales, UK. It demonstrates the value men in prison can play in developing the evidence base around health and wellbeing in prison, contributing to changes within the prison to improve health and wellbeing for all.