Healthier Prisons: The Role of a Prison Visitors' Centre (Report‪)‬

Introduction The aim of this paper is to present an evaluation of a prison visitors' centre and to locate those findings within current debates about strategies for promoting health within prisons, reducing re-offending, fostering family ties, and tackling health inequalities. The settings approach to health promotion has focussed attention on institutions such as schools, workplaces, hospitals, and by extension, on prisons. This focus has also enabled a discussion about the seeming contradiction between prison being places of punishment and correction, and their role in enhancing the health of a group of people who are literally a 'captive audience'. This itself raises issues about voluntarism, equal rights (i.e. the right of prisoners to receive the same standards of health input as the general public), and the tension between 'punishment' and 'rehabilitation'. This paradox has led authors in the area to question whether promoting health in prison is a contradiction in terms (Smith 2000), an oxymoron (McCallum 1995, de Viggiani 2006) or simply incompatible (Greenwood et al. 1999). These latter debates are outside the scope of this paper, which instead will focus on the ways in which a visitors' centre can enhance the health of prisoners, their families, and the prison staff.