How incarcerated women experience sport in prison: A systematic review of qualitative studies

Previous sociological research on sport in prisons has primarily focused on the male prison population. Against this background, this article deals with sport in women's prisons and analyzes qualitative studies published in English and German since the turn of the millennium in the form of a systematic review. The focus is on how incarcerated women experience and reflect on sport in prison and what meanings they attach to sport, according to previous studies. The aim of the review is to present overarching, recurring findings on this question. Through a systematic literature search in the databases Web of Science, ERIC, and SURF, we identified 13 qualitative studies that met our inclusion criteria. At a superordinate level, our comparative analysis shows that imprisoned women have contrasting perceptions of sport in prison. On the one hand, some imprisoned women experience sport in an extremely positive way, insofar as: (a) through sport, they gain health-promoting experiences; (b) sport helps them to cope with imprisonment; and (c) through sport, they gain self-esteem-boosting experiences and perceive personal development. Sport therefore proves to be a positive experiential space in some cases. On the other hand, sport is sometimes experienced negatively by imprisoned women insofar as: (a) they experience interpersonal and emotional tensions; (b) they experience body-image discomfort and trauma associated with participating in sport; and (c) they have to accept unpleasant structures and male ideas of sport. Sport therefore also proves to be a negative experiential space in some cases. Our review provides evidence that incarcerated women experience sport in prison in a much more negative way than men and at the same time provides background information for the low level of sport participation among imprisoned women reported in previous studies. Important implications for the implementation of sports programs in women's prisons can be derived from our findings.