Patching Up Prisoners: Pain Stereotypes and Prison Healthcare

Time Commitment: I commit roughly 8-10 hours each week to the research process for this project. It lasted from August 2025 to December 2025. ​

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Research Focus: The institution of prison and the medical field are widely regarded as highly racialized independently of one another, but little research has been done on the intersection of racial discrimination in the prison healthcare system. Previous research has studied prison as a space for institutional racism to flourish under the targeted mass incarceration of Black people. Further still are documented instances of medical racism in the form of misconceptions of pain tolerance (willful or otherwise) across historical and contemporary society. However, I aim to explore how stereotypes on pain tolerance and expression can affect people of color in the prison healthcare system utilizing deductive content analysis and critical ethnography. I argue that the paternalistic nature of the carceral system can allow for pain stereotyping to have a magnified effect in the form of causing new medical conditions or exacerbating existing ones. This research could bolster existing campaigns pushing for cultural sensitivity training in the medical field. Additionally, this research can be expanded upon to propose institutional reform in the prison healthcare system through policy amendment and abolition.

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Context: For the average person, there is often a large disconnect from the prison system. Often thought of as a distant punitive measure reserved for those that deserve it, the concept of prison typically exists in people’s mind as a latent force of justice, guiding their morality without ever truly inciting fear. However, a very different perception emerges among former and current prisoners, especially when those prisoners are Black. Unfortunately, attitudes of fear and disdain begin to emerge, oftentimes with roots in racial prejudice. Rather than feeling as though they can trust the means of incarceration, peers and authority figures within the prison system, and the justice system overall, recurring events in each of these areas has led some Black people to believe that the aforementioned areas exist as tools of oppression. Not only is this devastating to the security of a Black person in the carceral system, it has the potential to become dangerous or even lethal. This essay intersects two basic sectors of society that typically involve a level of subordination to public and privatized practices: the healthcare system and the prison system. By acknowledging that discrimination manifests in both sectors, one can ponder on what trends will emerge from situating all three together. It is here that the essay takes shape, exploring how stereotyping on pain tolerance and expression as a form of aversive racism interacts with the social norms of prison to affect prison healthcare.

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Project Responsibilities: 

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