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Thousands of people living with HIV are incarcerated in the United States. Research about this vulnerable community has focused on access and adherence to medical care, including the impact of stigma on these treatment outcomes. This study presents qualitative data collected from 18 incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women living with HIV to expand knowledge about how HIV stigma shapes the lived experience of incarceration. The HIV Stigma Framework, including theory about enacted, anticipated, and internalized stigma, was used to analyze participants’ narratives. Findings demonstrate an ongoing struggle with all three of these stigma mechanisms. Most participants deliberately concealed their HIV status and, therefore, experienced little enacted stigma. However, their narratives do describe anticipated stigma and, to a lesser extent, internalized stigma. There were gender differences in HIV disclosure and symbolic stigma and intersectionality are used to understand this variation. These findings illustrate the persistence of HIV stigma in correctional institutions and underscore the importance of fighting HIV stigma and homophobia within social work practice.

Sexual minority women (SMW) are a resilient yet vulnerable population who may experience poor psychosocial outcomes due to minority stress associated with their marginalized status and traumatic experiences resulting from interpersonal and structural violence. When SMW are incarcerated, the trauma of this experience can exacerbate existing mental health challenges. Self-concept is a key measure of mental health that is associated with increased self-efficacy and positive psychosocial outcomes. This analysis explores the ways in which incarceration impacts the self-concept of SMW. Secondary data analysis of three qualitative interviews with formerly incarcerated SMW was conducted. Specifically, Gilligan’s Listening Guide was used to create “I poems” that articulate the participants’ narratives and contrapuntal voices. These poems were then analyzed to build knowledge about participants’ self-concept. This analysis informs our understandings of self-concept among SMW, violence against women, the vulnerability of binary constructs, and the ways in which people negotiate past, present and future selves. The findings can inform interventions that seek to mitigate the psychosocial risks faced by SMW and formerly incarcerated people and improve outcomes for these populations.

Existing research suggests that individuals who are released from prison face considerable challenges in obtaining access to safe, stable, and affordable places to live and call home. This article draws on repeated qualitative interviews (conducted every 6 months over a period of 3 years) with 44 formerly incarcerated individuals, to understand how these individuals experience the search for a home after their prison release. The interviews show that the quest for a home is central to participants' reintegration projects as they seek to establish themselves as 'decent' and economically self-sufficient citizens, and shed stigmatized identities associated with incarceration, poverty, homelessness, and place. Interviews also suggest that their quest for a home is an arduous one as they encounter numerous barriers to housing arising from both structural and interpersonal forms of incarceration stigma. Somewhat paradoxically, the challenges that they face in accessing housing seem to hinder their ability to shed the stigmatized identities associated with their incarceration. Ultimately, the narratives presented here show how stigma can restrict access to a valuable material and symbolic resource (housing), resulting in ongoing stigmatization, and contributing to the enduring and discrediting mark of incarceration. In this way, the study illustrates how stigma that is enacted by both individuals and the state, that is embodied in place, and that is internalized and managed by stigmatized individuals themselves, can work to reproduce power and serve as justification for inequality.

This qualitative analysis explores older adults’ lived experiences of incarceration. As part of a larger mixed-methods longitudinal study, 23 older adults were interviewed about their prison and reentry experiences. Findings describe experiences of loss, lack of medical attention, abuse by staff and other inmates, and the uncertainties and danger of prison life. After release, participants reported experiencing anxiety and stress related to their prison experiences. While participants reported that the ability to manage prison life deteriorated with age, some benefits of their senior status were also described. Maturity may allow older prisoners to remove themselves from volatile situations. Participants described experiences of rest and recovery, reflecting coping mechanism and resilience that could improve psychosocial outcomes during and after prison. This descriptive analysis centers the voices of older prisoners and informs interventions to support this vulnerable community.

This article presents findings from a survey of undergraduate social work (Bachelor of Social Work [BSW]) students about their experiences with remote learning during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. In response to this crisis, remote learning was rapidly implemented and many BSW educators and students experienced online classrooms for the first time. Findings from this study shed light on how remote learning shapes the interpersonal relationships and communication that are so critical to building students’ sense of classroom belonging, engagement, and learning.

Norms and behaviors about toileting in prison can expand understanding of women's lived experience of incarceration. Knowledge about this subject is significant because access to clean, safe toilets is a human rights issue, and toilet habits can impact social, mental, and physical outcomes. Three focus groups were conducted with 15 incarcerated women about their quotidian prison toilet experiences. While the toilet was physically available, institutional regulations, social norms, and women's individual psychologies limited their access and utilization. The ways in which toilet use was negotiated with self, peers, and are described, and the implications of these findings are discussed.

This study examines the post-incarceration housing experiences of 33 women. Using Residential Timeline Followback methodology, participants were asked to report where they lived at arrest and every location since their release. Follow-up questions asked women to describe these locations, who they lived with, how much they paid, and whether or not they felt safe. Demographic information and criminal justice history were recorded. The data paint a complicated picture of social and community resources, persistence, and struggle. Housing assets lost at incarceration were difficult to recover. Most women bounced between various locations, relying heavily on short-term subsidized congregate housing programs and rarely securing independent housing. Participants described the family, friends, and acquaintances who housed them during reentry as overextended and vulnerable. Implications for policy and practice are explored. © The Author(s) 2020.

Background: While incarcerated people are known to experience trauma at higher rates than the general population, little is known about how the correctional health system contributes to trauma rates. Methods: We conducted 20 semi-structured qualitative interviews with men who were recently released from a correctional system to understand their experiences with healthcare systems and medical staff during incarceration. Using reflexive thematic analysis within a critical realist framework, we coded and analyzed the data iteratively to refine and unify emerging themes. Results: The unanticipated concept of healthcare-induced trauma emerged and was revealed in three overall themes: (1) healthcare leading to fear of serious illness or death, (2) healthcare leading to fear of people, including healthcare providers, correctional staff, and other incarcerated people, and (3) the correctional institutional, social, and physical environment leads to fear of place. Conclusions: Healthcare in correctional settings has the potential to induce trauma, even when the medical conditions addressed are not life-threatening. Future research should examine the factors contributing to the development of healthcare-induced trauma in correctional settings and develop interventions to prevent and address this phenomenon. © 2021, The Author(s).

Lebanon is a diverse and dynamic nation of six million people that has experienced considerable disruption for the last two decades. The Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011, resulted in the displacement of 1.1 million Syrians to Lebanon. Today, Lebanon is the country with the largest per capita number of refugees in the world. In addition, the country experienced a social, economic, and political crisis in 2019 that destabilized the entire society-circumstances that were further complicated by COVID-19 pandemic. With all of the competing calamities in Lebanon, there has been limited scientific investigation into substance use and the risk of HIV infection among the country's population. To address this gap in knowledge, a qualitative rapid situational assessment (RSA) of substance use and risk of HIV infection in and around Beirut, the nation's capital, was conducted. The goal of this analysis is to describe the demographics and drug use patterns of this population, explore their HIV knowledge and risks, and build knowledge about their perceptions of and access to substance use treatment and other social services.