Nicholas Iacobelli, under the supervision of Dr. Phillipe Bourgois of the University of Pennsylvania, will explore how healthcare security is negotiated among socially marginal communities. The research focuses on prison inmates, a population largely uninsured and with inconsistent healthcare access on the outside, but who are paradoxically the only U.S. population group currently guaranteed a constitutional right to healthcare. The study seeks to evaluate this paradox through an ethnographic evaluation of the legal, political, and economic determinants of prison healthcare juxtaposed with the everyday operations of correctional healthcare administration in a maximum-security prison. This project will address 1) How prisons are relied upon to generate healthcare security, and 2) What social factors shape local care seeking and provision.
This project responds to the dearth of detailed ethnographic research in prison settings by examining the everyday dynamics of incarceration and analyzing them in the larger context of state services and citizenship. The study's ethnographic approach will provide insight on the interpersonal, administrative, and legal processes that dictate care with a focus on what is at stake "on the ground."
It is thus uniquely situated to generate knowledge about contemporary state services, social marginalization, and the political role of health. It will also be able to help local correctional healthcare providers structure their policies and practices to address the study's findings and generate broader debate about care provision and the costs of incarceration.
