Does nature contact in prison improve wellbeing? Greenspace, self-harm, violence and staff sickness absence in prisons in England and Wales

This chapter draws together a set of recent findings which demonstrate a statistically robust relationship between green space and wellbeing of prisoners and prison staff. Extending prior prison-level qualitative studies which find that nature contact influences prisoners’ self-reported wellbeing, this work used GIS mapping to generate a new prison greenspace dataset, capturing—for a cross-section of prisons in England and Wales—the percentage of greenspace within their perimeters. Econometric estimations confirm that greenspace fosters prisoner and prison staff wellbeing, in that there are lower levels of self-harm and violence, and lower levels of staff sickness absence, in prisons with more greenspace. These relationships persist when prison size, type, age, staffing level, and level of crowding are controlled for. The findings have the potential to significantly influence future prison design. In addition to summarising these findings, the chapter also reports exploratory investigations on whether and how the inclusion of prison layout type might impact on the wellbeing effects of greenspace.