P074. Measuring quality of prison life in Spain: are decent treatment and quality relationships the determinant factors for inmates when assessing the moral performance of a penitentiary?

• In Event: Poster Session & Ice Cream Social

Abstract

The treatment inmates receive in penitentiaries and the quality of their relationships with the prison staff, with other prisoners and with the outside world are known as the most determining factors for their quality of life, to the point of making their stay in prison an ordeal or an experience, if not pleasant, then at least tolerable (Liebling, 2004). The UNESCO Chair for Human Rights and Public Authorities has carried out a pilot project in order to test these ideas in Spanish prisons using the MQPL questionnaire, which has been translated into Spanish, shortened, as well as culturally and technically adapted to the Spanish context and prison background. The first results show that kindness, respect, and the absence of humiliation toward the prisoners play indeed a role for the inmates when it comes to describing the living conditions in a certain prison. However, other variables such a good or bad organization reveal themselves as equally important or even more relevant. This poster aims to show the preliminary results of the pilot project and thus reflects a hypothesis that will have to be confirmed when the survey is administered to a larger inmate sample during 2026

Author

• Enara Garro Carrera, University of the Basque Country