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The aims of this paper are to determine the state of visiting for women in the English prison system and to explore the relationship between women's mental health and visits in prison.

For the purpose of this paper the authors conducted a review of the literature. All literature published from 1983 onwards was included to coincide with the introduction of Pat Carlen's (1983) campaigning group Women in Prison (WIP). The review focused on all literature from England and Wales to reflect the National Criminal Justice System and used an inclusion criteria to achieve this.

The review revealed key themes including visit rejection, the importance of visits for maintaining identity and the contradicting emotions that women in prison experience when visited.

Social relationships and family ties are protective factors for prisoners' mental wellbeing, yet the number and frequency of visits to offenders in custody has declined. The potential role for prison visiting schemes to improve the mental wellbeing of women in custody is explored, including the implications for the education and training of staff and visitors involved in the visiting process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conditions that create a “good” prison visit, focussing on the role that a dedicated third sector-run prison visitors’ centre plays in creating a supportive environment.

This paper draws on a synthesis of empirical data gathering conducted over a decade at a voluntary sector-managed prison visitors’ centre based at a male prison in Northern England. The paper draws specifically on qualitative data gathered through four independent evaluations of the centre over a ten-year period.

An important point to emerge from the research is the unwavering importance of the prison visit in the life, well-being and regime of a prisoner. Prison visitors’ centres are shown to be an important part of creating positive visits experiences offering a space for composure and for support for families.

Many voluntary sector organisations are unable to commission large research and evaluation studies, but are often able to fund smaller pieces of work. Pooling qualitative evidence from smaller studies is a viable way to potentially strengthen commissioning decisions in this sector.

From June 2017 to May 2018, the Prison Reform Trust partnered with Families Outside to identify the particular impacts on children of a mother's involvement in the criminal justice system. This included a literature review and extensive consultations with 25 children and 31 mothers with lived experience. This chapter presents the main findings of the research, which identified five key themes: ‘Children with a mother in prison are invisible within the systems that are there to protect them’; ‘Every aspect of a child's life may be disrupted when a mother goes to prison’; ‘Children feel stigmatised when a mother is involved in the criminal justice system’; ‘Children affected by imprisonment face many barriers to support’ and ‘With the right support, children can become more resilient and develop the skills they need to thrive’. The material presented in this chapter constitutes a compelling case for reform. The chapter concludes with recommendations for action at local and national levels to protect children from the harm caused by maternal imprisonment.

The purpose of this article is to explore the influence of books, libraries and reading on the experience of time within the prison environment.

Using semi-structured interviews with Australian adult prisoners, and a phenomenological data analysis method, the researcher has been able to identify lived experiences that explain how books, libraries and reading influence the experience of time, within a prison environment.

Prisoners' experience of time differs from the experience of time outside prison. Unlike readers and library users outside prison, prisoners are motivated to use books, libraries and reading to pass time. They are using books, libraries and reading to assist in their struggle to manage the negative effects of excessive quantities of unstructured time.

Research regarding the motivation to read and use libraries in the general population does not identify the desire to pass time as a factor. In contrast, the current study identifies readers and library users in prisons are strongly motivated to read and visit libraries as a means of passing time. This study adds a new understanding of the motivation to read and visit libraries within prison environments and provides insight into the beneficial influence of prison libraries on prisoner wellbeing.

This research contributes valuable new knowledge regarding the experience of time in prison, and the influence of books, libraries and reading on this experience.

The authors thought of the idea for this exploratory paper for Drugs and Alcohol Today after visiting a local prison on the outskirts of Madrid from which these field notes are taken. The authors have also had informal conversations with the contacts working in the Spanish Prison service. When the authors looked at some of the literature around the relationships between drugs and prisons in Spain, the authors found lots of statistics, and material which either said there were lots of drugs in prison or literature which presented over-medicalised processes of drug treatment. In short, the authors found few studies which could bring to life the kind of problems drugs bring to the prison and how the dynamics of the prison are not only directly impacted by drug use but also as drug dealing/trafficking. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

What the authors offer is only really to draw your attention to the issue. The authors have no real methodology to reflect on other than one of us is an experienced participant observer and the other is a lawyer and criminologist who has worked with numerous clients processed for drug offences in and around prisons in Madrid. Between us, we have undertaken six visits to Madrileñas prisons.

In this explorative paper the authors want to do three things. First, draw attention to the extent of problem of drugs in prison in Spain. Second, the authors want to suggest that the role drugs needs reconsideration as it plays a pivotal role in the functioning of the prison. Lastly, the authors push for more research into this issue which goes beyond conventional surveys and unnecessary complex regression analyses and instead takes a qualitative approach using observational data and informal conversations to explore these dynamics in more detail.

First, that there is an urgent need to go beyond these official statistics and explore in some nuanced detail about the prison experience in Spain. The existing research is limiting in that it talks tiresomely about the numbers incarcerated and fails to admit the significance of drugs not only as a motivating factor for incarceration but also the role drugs play in the prison environment. The authors need to consider as much the changing demography of Spanish prisons – for example more immigrants, different drugs, etc. – as the everyday experience of drugs, debt, disagreements and violence and how they intersect as a lived experience rather than consider them as separate issues of analysis, dormant from the interconnectedness of the micro-interactions of the prison environment and the respective institutional power structures. The key to this debate, and the general messages of this paper, is to realize a study which can explore the nuances of the role and function of drugs play in Spanish prisons.

This article aims to describe the personal experience and ethical dilemmas that the author encountered when conducting qualitative research on a highly sensitive topic, i.e. interviews with offenders convicted of child pornography.

This study uses an autoethnographic approach to describe and reflect on my personal experience, emotions and ethical dilemmas when undertaking sensitive research that examines illegal acts.

Ethical dilemmas and emotional challenges highlighted refer to the issue of access to useful empirical material, conducting interviews with convicted offenders in prison environments, the complexity surrounding confidentiality when interviewing offenders about their criminal activities, vulnerability and insecurity for the researcher and emotional challenges for the researcher when listening to the offenders’ stories describing serious crimes against children.

This article contributes with insights and reflections on conducting qualitative research with a marginalized and stigmatized group in prison environments.