Exploring the service delivery of incarcerated women: the case of prison center in Gondar, Ethiopia

The aim of a prison system is to deter crime, incarceration, and rehabilitation of criminals. Despite differences in time and place, this aim is not addressed in most parts of the world, including Ethiopia. This service deficiency is especially visible in the cases of incarcerated women. The incarceration of women often relates to poverty, as in failure to pay financial penalties and due to smallness in number. The literature shows that women tend to face a higher rate of abuse than men in prison populations. All these are the manifestations of social injustices against incarcerated women. Hence, there are methodological and spatial gaps in the study of service delivery of incarcerated women in Ethiopia, especially in Gondar prison center. Therefore, this research focuses on the prison condition of incarcerated women in Gondar City of Northern Ethiopia, with a specific emphasis on prison services such as education, health, recreation, food, housing, counselling, and guidance. To achieve these objectives, a qualitative research approach of data collection and analysis has been employed. Because the qualitative approach is informative, creates face-to-face contact with the informants, and gathers first-hand information about the issue under study. The relevant data were collected through a key informant interview with prison administrators and officers, FGDs with imprisoned women and prison administrators and officers and observation of the prison settings. Nine key informants and Fourteen FGD discussants were selected via purposive sampling for qualitative data. The study's findings revealed that there is poor and lack of provision of health, education, and counselling services to incarcerated women. The data gathered through key informant interviews, FGDs, and observations also confirmed that incarcerated women are living with in deteriorated services in health, education, food, housing, counselling and guidance delivery. No educational services are delivered for now due to damage to all the school resources. The health services of incarcerated women, pregnant incarcerated women and children with incarcerated women are poor. This study suggests that the prison center lacks food, housing, counselling, and guidance. To apprehend the services of incarcerated women, there are challenges such as security problems, financial related, human resource related and cultural related problems. The study also revealed opportunities such as building water pumps and increment payments for training providers in and outside the prison center. Finally, the study proposes a call-up of GOs, NGOs, policymakers, and national and international organizations to plant services like education and health urgently.