This programme ‘Prisons, Drugs and Mental Health: an interdisciplinary global study’ has been funded by the Wellcome Trust (Discovery Award) and is directed by Principal Investigator Professor Clare Anderson. The project is a partnership between the University of Leicester, University of Guyana, University of the West Indies, and Le Chantier (Mauritius). A multi-disciplinary research team is researching the production, supply, use, and lived experience of drugs among prison communities, c.1800 to the present day to produce historicised knowledge, insights, and concepts that aim to reduce long-term health challenges and inequalities associated with drugs and their burden on criminal justice systems globally.
Its aim is to identify the multisystemic factors – medical, socio-economic, cultural, institutional – that can help trace connections and disconnections between historic practice and the present day.
The project’s perspective is historical, social and cultural. It is rooted in the hypothesis that drug cultures and addiction in prisons, including the use of prescription medication to control prisoners, are rooted in colonial era health practices, law, and population management and not solely in modern medical regimes and criminal justice systems.
During the course of the programme we will build a global team that will transform understandings of drugs, addiction and mental health, among prison communities, in colonial and post-colonial settings. Inspire and catalyse global research communities that can integrate diverse perspectives – and work towards breaking the cycles that leave people and communities behind. Create ‘useable pasts’ of drugs as social rather than individual determinants of mental health and explore their global impacts now using decolonizing and culturally affirming methodologies.