This article presents crucial new evidence that prisons with a higher proportion of the area within their perimeter given over to natural vegetation exhibit lower levels of self-harm and violence (both between prisoners and toward staff). Extending prior qualitative prison-level studies that find that nature contact influences prisoners’ self-reported well-being, it uses geographic information systems mapping to generate a new prison greenspace data set, 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 well-being, in that there are lower levels of self-harm and violence in prisons with more greenspace. These relationships are statistically robust, and they persist when we control for prison size, type, age, and level of crowding. These findings are noteworthy in that they both extend understandings of well-being in custodial environments and have the potential to significantly influence future prison design. The article also provides important new insights demonstrating links between greenspace and well-being that have significance beyond the specifics of carceral environments.

本文提供了重要的新证据，表明在其周界内被自然植被覆盖的区域比例较高的监狱表现出较低水平的自残和暴力（在囚犯之间和对工作人员）。扩展先前的定性监狱级研究，发现自然接触会影响囚犯自我报告的幸福感，它使用地理信息系统映射来生成新的监狱绿地数据集，捕获英格兰和威尔士监狱的横截面——其周边绿地的百分比。计量经济学估计证实，绿色空间促进了囚犯的福祉，因为在拥有更多绿色空间的监狱中，自我伤害和暴力的程度较低。这些关系在统计上是稳健的，当我们控制监狱规模、类型、年龄、和拥挤程度。这些发现值得注意，因为它们既扩展了对羁押环境中幸福感的理解，也有可能对未来的监狱设计产生重大影响。这篇文章还提供了重要的新见解，展示了绿色空间与福祉之间的联系，这些联系的意义超出了监狱环境的具体情况。