Space, place and movement as aspects of health care in three womenʹs prisons

This paper focuses on prison as a place in which the prisoner seeks health and health services. Drawing on the work of Henri LeFebvre, Edward Casey, Jeffrey Malpas, and Michel Foucault, a spatial analysis examines the constitutive roles of movement, social structure, and power in determining the prisonerʹs access to health care. The research methodology utilizes quantitative and qualitative analysis of women prisoners’ attempts to get treatment for their health problems. The narratives of these often-failed attempts construct prison as a place where health care access is continually thwarted by rules, custodial priorities, poor health care management, incompetence, and indifference. Analysis of spatial practices, representations of space, and spaces of representation demonstrate the imposition of structural ordering, its naturalization, and the role of narrative in questioning the order, thereby creating possibilities for imaginary and real places where the prisoners’ health needs can be met. Simultaneously, this analysis illuminates basic ethical questions about the limitations of human connection and medical caring in prison settings, regardless of the personal motivation of the caregiver.