ABSTRACT
In many ways, security is the most central rationale of a prison, and it is the job of prison administrators to keep prisoners locked up and societies safe. There is, however, a remarkable security paradox in these institutions. Their inhabitants, the prisoners, often face significant security issues in terms of their personal health and well-being while being incarcerated. In that sense, there is a fundamental question of unequal security in these institutions: Does the state protect the security of those inside the prison walls in a satisfactory and reasonable way while attempting to protect the security of those on the outside? This chapter addresses this issue through a case study of women prisoners in high-security prisons in Norway with a focus on their health problems and their access to healthcare. The chapter demonstrates how conditions of confinement are characterized by a high level of psychiatric morbidity, acute crisis, isolation and self-harm, and describes how prisoners become intimately involved in each other's mental health problems. We conclude that the incarcerated women are in the hands of the state—the primary provider of security in a modern democratic society—which fails to provide them with an environment that offers security and health in an equal manner. In that sense, these women experience what has been referred to as an ‘injustice of place’.
