Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the 'trouble' of making space for mental health care within penal estates through research in a new unit for prisoners with serious mental illnesses (SMIs) in an English prison. The paper asks what 'hope' the experimental approach offers for improving care of prisoners with SMIs.

Paper long abstract:

There has long been concern that the de-institutionalisation of mental health care has been accompanied by a re-institutionalisation of those with mental health care needs within prisons (Dear and Wolch, 1987; Nickerson, 1985). Mental illness and well-being are frequently negatively impacted by experiences of incarceration (Crewe, 2011). Prisoners with serious mental illnesses (SMIs) are 'troublesome' (Philo and Parr, 2019) to prisons as institutions at a time when they are also troubled by overcrowding within a penal estate that has been slow to adapt to shifts in punitive regimes and changing approaches to mental health care. Prisons have historically sought to move out those whose mental illnesses mean they are unable to self-govern (Crewe, 2011; Foucault, 1977) in a way required by contemporary penal regimes (Duke et al, 2018). However, the growing numbers of prisoners with SMIs alongside austerity politics that has restricted or reduced capacity beyond prisons for secure care, are forcing prison authorities to consider how they can accommodate care for serious mental illness within the penal estate. In this paper I explore these enfolding spatialities of care and control (McGeachan, 2019) in a large reception prison in the North of England as the mental health care provider and prison authorities 'make space' for prisoners with SMIs. In doing so, I contribute to critical debates in geography and anthropology concerning the 'trouble' institutions both present and to which they are subject in the contemporary context (Disney and Schliehe, 2019) and ask what 'hope' this new approach might offer.