Humans peeing: Justice-involved women's access to toilets in public spaces.

Justice-involved women face myriad challenges as they negotiate the terms of community supervision and manage the long-term implications and stigma of living with a criminal record. Major tasks that women juggle include securing safe, affordable housing, finding and retaining employment, accessing physical and mental health care (including substance use treatment), and handling relationships with family, friends, children, and intimate partners. In addition to these responsibilities, women must meet their basic physiological needs to eat, sleep, and use the toilet. Women's ability to safely meet their personal care needs may impact their capacity to manage their criminal-legal challenges. This study uses qualitative methods to understand justice-involved women's lived experiences related to urination. Specifically, the study reports on a thematic analysis of 8 focus groups conducted with justice-involved women (n = 58) and the results of a toilet audit conducted in the downtown areas of the small city in the United States where the focus group participants were living. Findings suggest that women had limited access to restrooms and reported urinating outside. Lack of restroom access impacted their engagement with social services support and employment and their ability to travel through public spaces. Women perceived their public toilet options as unsafe, increasing their sense of vulnerability and reinforcing the idea that they did not have full access to citizenship in the community because of their criminal-legal involvement. The exclusion and denial of women's humanity that is perpetuated by a lack of public toilet access impacts women's psychosocial outcomes. City governments, social service agencies, and employers are encouraged to consider how lack of toilet access may impact their public safety and criminal-legal objectives and expand opportunities for people to access safe restroom facilities.

Incarcerated People Living with HIV: A Qualitative Exploration of Stigma.

Thousands of people living with HIV are incarcerated in the United States. Research about this vulnerable community has focused on access and adherence to medical care, including the impact of stigma on these treatment outcomes. This study presents qualitative data collected from 18 incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women living with HIV to expand knowledge about how HIV stigma shapes the lived experience of incarceration. The HIV Stigma Framework, including theory about enacted, anticipated, and internalized stigma, was used to analyze participants' narratives. Findings demonstrate an ongoing struggle with all three of these stigma mechanisms. Most participants deliberately concealed their HIV status and, therefore, experienced little enacted stigma. However, their narratives do describe anticipated stigma and, to a lesser extent, internalized stigma. There were gender differences in HIV disclosure and symbolic stigma and intersectionality are used to understand this variation. These findings illustrate the persistence of HIV stigma in correctional institutions and underscore the importance of fighting HIV stigma and homophobia within social work practice.

Stress, Marginalization, and Disruption: A Qualitative Rapid Situational Assessment of Substance Users and HIV Risk in Lebanon.

Lebanon is a diverse and dynamic nation of six million people that has experienced considerable disruption for the last two decades. The Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011, resulted in the displacement of 1.1 million Syrians to Lebanon. Today, Lebanon is the country with the largest per capita number of refugees in the world. In addition, the country experienced a social, economic, and political crisis in 2019 that destabilized the entire society-circumstances that were further complicated by COVID-19 pandemic. With all of the competing calamities in Lebanon, there has been limited scientific investigation into substance use and the risk of HIV infection among the country's population. To address this gap in knowledge, a qualitative rapid situational assessment (RSA) of substance use and risk of HIV infection in and around Beirut, the nation's capital, was conducted. The goal of this analysis is to describe the demographics and drug use patterns of this population, explore their HIV knowledge and risks, and build knowledge about their perceptions of and access to substance use treatment and other social services.

Healthcare-induced trauma in correctional facilities: a qualitative exploration.

BACKGROUND: While incarcerated people are known to experience trauma at higher rates than the general population, little is known about how the correctional health system contributes to trauma rates. METHODS: We conducted 20 semi-structured qualitative interviews with men who were recently released from a correctional system to understand their experiences with healthcare systems and medical staff during incarceration. Using reflexive thematic analysis within a critical realist framework, we coded and analyzed the data iteratively to refine and unify emerging themes. RESULTS: The unanticipated concept of healthcare-induced trauma emerged and was revealed in three overall themes: (1) healthcare leading to fear of serious illness or death, (2) healthcare leading to fear of people, including healthcare providers, correctional staff, and other incarcerated people, and (3) the correctional institutional, social, and physical environment leads to fear of place. CONCLUSIONS: Healthcare in correctional settings has the potential to induce trauma, even when the medical conditions addressed are not life-threatening. Future research should examine the factors contributing to the development of healthcare-induced trauma in correctional settings and develop interventions to prevent and address this phenomenon.

Hygge: Food and the construction of safety among incarcerated women in Denmark.

Knowledge about women's socio-emotional experience of incarceration is sparse. To address this gap in the research, open-ended interviews were conducted with 9 incarcerated women in Denmark. The inquiry focused on their experiences with prison food and eating, including questions about hygge-related practices. Hygge is a cherished part of Danish culture that encourages people to create cozy environments by sharing food and fellowship. While this warm and comforting practice may seem incongruent with prison, contemporary theory about carceral geography suggests a wide range of emotional spaces within prisons and identifies the central role of incarcerated people and external norms on constructing these spaces. The participants' narratives describe and explain the role of hygge in Danish prisons. Participants report using food and other props to construct hygge in their cells, in common areas, and with visitors, in order to build safety and manage the harshness of prison life. While these experiences are fleeting, findings suggest that the ability of these women to engage in hygge practices has a deeply positive impact on their lived experience of incarceration. The findings expand understanding about the role of food in prison and inform the practices of correctional facilities.

Food in correctional facilities: A scoping review.

In the last 20 years, there has been an exponential increase in research about food in prison. Given this growing interest, it is appropriate to take stock of the field by mapping and synthesizing existing knowledge in order to identify gaps in knowledge and make recommendations for future research. Specifically, the purpose of this scoping review is to understand the experiences of incarcerated people with food in order to inform interventions that will promote positive outcomes for justice-involved individuals and correctional facilities. This review identified 38 peer-reviewed research articles about food in correctional facilities. This sample included qualitative (n = 28) and quantitative (n = 10) research that explored the both the pragmatic and symbolic dimensions of food in these settings. Taken together, this body of research provides a rich description of prison food practices and the implications of these practices on medical, psychological, and sociological outcomes. Moving forward, collaboration between academics, incarcerated people, and correctional practitioners is encouraged in order to develop programs that use this research to improve individual and intuitional outcomes. In addition, while emerging research has begun to develop knowledge about prison food in developing countries, the literature focuses primarily on the US, Canada and Western Europe and there is a need to expand the geographic scope of this inquiry.

Stigma, housing and identity after prison.

Existing research suggests that individuals who are released from prison face considerable challenges in obtaining access to safe, stable, and affordable places to live and call home. This article draws on repeated qualitative interviews (conducted every 6 months over a period of 3 years) with 44 formerly incarcerated individuals, to understand how these individuals experience the search for a home after their prison release. The interviews show that the quest for a home is central to participants' reintegration projects as they seek to establish themselves as 'decent' and economically self-sufficient citizens, and shed stigmatized identities associated with incarceration, poverty, homelessness, and place. Interviews also suggest that their quest for a home is an arduous one as they encounter numerous barriers to housing arising from both structural and interpersonal forms of incarceration stigma. Somewhat paradoxically, the challenges that they face in accessing housing seem to hinder their ability to shed the stigmatized identities associated with their incarceration. Ultimately, the narratives presented here show how stigma can restrict access to a valuable material and symbolic resource (housing), resulting in ongoing stigmatization, and contributing to the enduring and discrediting mark of incarceration. In this way, the study illustrates how stigma that is enacted by both individuals and the state, that is embodied in place, and that is internalized and managed by stigmatized individuals themselves, can work to reproduce power and serve as justification for inequality.

Системы питания в исправительных учреждениях: обзор литературы и ситуационное исследование

Питание является одним из центральных элементов жизни в исправительных учреждениях и играет критически важную роль в поддержании физического и психического здоровья людей, находящихся под стражей, и в формировании идентичности заключенных и взаимоотношений между ними. Понимание роли питания в исправительных учреждениях и эффективная организация систем питания может улучшить положение лиц, находящихся под стражей, и помочь администрации исправительных учреждений добиться максимального уровня здоровья и безопасности людей в этих учреждениях. В данном докладе кратко описаны результаты проведенных исследований по изучению систем питания в исправительных учреждениях и приведены примеры программ питания в учреждениях исполнения наказания и предварительного заключения, включая ситуационное исследование связанного с питанием нововведения в исправительной системе Дании. Предлагаются конкретные выводы для лиц, формирующих политику, администраторов учреждений и специалистов тюремных служб питания, а также выдвигаются идеи для дальнейших исследований.

Food systems in correctional settings: a literature review and case study

Food is a central component of life in correctional institutions and plays a critical role in the physical and mental health of incarcerated people and the construction of prisoners’ identities and relationships. An understanding of the role of food in correctional settings and effective management of food systems may improve outcomes for incarcerated people and help correctional administrators to maximize the health and safety of individuals in these institutions. This report summarizes existing research about food systems in correctional settings and provides examples of food programmes in prison and remand facilities, including a case study of food-related innovation in the Danish correctional system. Specific conclusions are offered for policy-makers, administrators of correctional institutions and prison food services professionals,and ideas for future research are proposed.

Dealing food: female drug users' narratives about food in a prison place and implications for their health.

BACKGROUND: Prison is a major "place" for drug users in the US, yet remarkably little is known about the lived experience of incarceration. More information about prison life is needed to improve health outcomes for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. METHODS: Thirty (30) formerly incarcerated women were interviewed about prison food. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. Qualitative data analysis software was used to code and organize the data using thematic analysis. RESULTS: As described in these participants' narratives, prison food systems contributed to the construction of boundaries that distinguished the prison place from places and life outside the institution's walls. Participants also described boundaries within the prison that resulted in a patchwork of interior places, each with their own unique structure, meaning, and food system. These places, constructed by physical location, movement, and power, or lack thereof, included various micro-geographies that further defined women's individual prison experience. The boundaries that separated these places were not fixed: Women shifted and diminished internal and external borders by resisting food policies and reproducing their outside lives inside. CONCLUSION: These findings call for public policy officials and prison administrators to reexamine the prison place in order to facilitate healthier eating behaviors and lay the groundwork for more positive communication between inmates and correctional staff and administration. More research is needed to measure how these types of changes to the prison food environment impact nutritional, mental health, substance abuse, and criminal justice outcomes.

Compensation for incarcerated research participants: diverse state policies suggest a new research agenda.

Research with prisoners is essential to understanding the incarceration experience and creating interventions to mediate its effects on individual and community health. Policies on research involving incarcerated participants can influence the extent to which researchers are able or willing to conduct prison studies. We attempted to collect data on inmate compensation policies from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. We found that 44% of these jurisdictions allow compensation for inmates who participate in research, with wide variations in terms of the clarity of and ease of access to policy information. Anecdotal data suggest considerable administrative discretion in the implementation of these policies. Further study is needed on how compensation policies are formulated and enacted and their effects on research with prisoners.

Black-white disparities in HIV/AIDS: the role of drug policy and the corrections system.

African Americans in the United States are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. We focus in this paper on the structural and contextual sources of HIV/AIDS risk, and suggest that among the most important of these sources are drug policy and the corrections system. In particular, high rates of exposure to the corrections system (including incarceration, probation, and parole) spurred in large part by federal and state governments' self-styled war on drugs in the United States, have disproportionately affected African Americans. We review a wide range of research literature to suggest how exposure to the corrections system may affect the HIV/AIDS related risks of drug users in general, and the disproportionate HIV risk faced by African Americans in particular. We then discuss the implications of the information reviewed for structural interventions to address African American HIV-related risk. Future research must further our understanding of the relations among drug policy, corrections, and race-based disparities in HIV/AIDS.