Conditions of Confinement and Incarcerated Women’s Mental Health

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/15570851231178935
• Author: Timothy G. Edgemon,Jody Clay-Warner
• Date: 01 July 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Feminist Criminology

2023, Vol. 18(3) 250–273

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/15570851231178935

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Conditions of Conf‌inement

and Incarcerated Women’s

Mental Health

Timothy G. Edgemon

1

and Jody Clay-Warner

2

Abstract

Research on incarceration and mental health from a deprivation perspective has

focused primarily on incarcerated men, rendering the links between prison dep-

rivations and women’s mental health largely unknown. Previous research indicates,

however, that women experience prison differently than do men, making it im-

portant to examine how prison conditions impact women’s mental health. Here, we

use national data on 1490 women incarcerated in the United States and the 60 state

prisons in which they reside to examine the links between prison conditions and

symptoms of mental health conditions, net of individual-level factors. Hierarchal

negative binomial regression models indicate that the punitiveness of the prison

environment, the recent occurrence of a suicide in the prison, and fewer prison

programs are all associated with symptom count. These results have important

implications for understanding the mechanisms through which prison deprivations

are linked to women’s mental health.

Keywords

women in prison, mental health, incarceration, deprivation theory, gendered pains of

imprisonment

1

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, & Social Work, Auburn Univeristy, Auburn, AL, USA

2

Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Timothy G. Edgemon, Auburn University, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, & Social Work, Haley

Center 7030, Auburn, AL 36849-5412, USA.

Email: tedgemon@auburn.edu

Poor mental health is a serious and pervasive problem in the American system of mass

incarceration. The problem is particularly pronounced for women, as nearly three-

quarters of women in prison report a mental health condition (James & Glaze, 2006),

and rates of mental illness among incarcerated women are signif‌icantly higher than in

the general population of U.S. women (Fazel & Danesh, 2002;Fazel & Baillargeon,

2011;Prins, 2014). Despite the fact that a sizable proportion of women in prison have

severe mental health conditions, there is little research investigating the source of

incarcerated women’s mental health problems from a structural perspective. In par-

ticular, research has not considered how the conditions of the prison environment might

contribute to the mental health of incarcerated women (Liebling, 2006).

Theoretically, we should expect that onerous prison conditions are linked to poor

mental health outcomes through a larger stress process whereby prison conditions

represent potent environmental stressors for incarcerated people. Indeed, past empirical

work from a prison deprivation perspective has documented how the “pains of im-

prisonment”are associated with poor mental health for men (e.g., Edgemon & Clay-

Warner, 2019;Slotboom et al., 2011). There are certain deprivations, though, that are

even more severe in the typical women’s prison than in men’s prisons, including

overcrowding, limited recreational activities, and harsh penal regimes (Britton, 2003;

Lane 2020;Leigey, 2019;Owen et al., 2017;Sharkey, 2010).

The recognition that women face unique prison conditions has led scholars to call for

research investigating the “gendered pains of imprisonment”(Crewe et al., 2017).

However, past studies of the relationship between prison deprivations and incarcerated

women’s mental health have either focused on a narrow band of mental health con-

ditions, collected information about institutional characteristics from the prison resi-

dents, resulting in common method bias, and/or included data from only a small

number of prisons (Kruttschnitt & Vuolo, 2007;Sharkey, 2010;Slotboom et al., 2011).

Here, we analyze data from almost 1500 women residing in 60 prisons across the

U.S. to examine the relationship between the poor mental health of incarcerated women

and the conditions of their conf‌inement. The unique characteristics of these data allow

us to test not only arguments from the broader literature on conditions of conf‌inement

and mental health (Edgemon, 2022;Edgemon & Clay-Warner, 2019) but also argu-

ments that are specif‌ic to incarcerated women. Not only do women’s prisons differ from

men’s prisons in many ways, but women also enter prison with a different set of pre-

incarcerative experiences than do men, such as higher rates of physical and sexual

abuse (Kruttschnitt & Gartner, 2003). Men and women also face different gender role

expectations and constraints. For example, prison staff often view incar cerated women

as overly emotional and police their actions more heavily than the actions of incar-

cerated men. This affects incarcerated women’s reactions to the prison environment and

their interactions with prison staff (e.g., Britton, 2003;Owen et al., 2017). Thus, in

proposing how prison deprivations are associated with women’s mental health, we

draw from research on women’s prisons and on women’s prison experiences (e.g.,

Aiello & McCorkel, 2018;Dye & Aday, 2013;Liebling, 1992).

Edgemon and Clay-Warner 251