ABSTRACT
Prison, as a punitive institution and a gender-segregated space, has fuelled many sexual fantasies (gay pornography, for example, or ‘women-in-prison’ movies). In popular culture, sexuality in prison is often associated with men being victims of rape, sexual coercion or same-sex sexuality. This chapter reviews the growing research field on sexuality in prison and the main obstacles faced by the research. It shows how, for a long time, sexual behaviours in prison have been viewed as different from the ones ‘outside’ (‘prison homosexuality’, for example) and as part of the prisoners’ subculture, mostly shaped by confinement. The chapter also offers a comparative approach of sexuality in prison in Western countries. It explores both heterosexual and homosexual sexual behaviours (either consensual or not) and prisoners’ sexual and reproductive health and rights. As a whole, the chapter provides an understanding of the experience of sexuality in prison and of how carceral institutions (jails, prisons, and so on) regulate the sexuality of men and women through various rules and policies (like conjugal visitations).
