“I try and make my cell a positive place”: Tactics for managing health and wellbeing in a young offender institution

Prisons provide an important public health opportunity to improve the health of a hard to reach population. However, the prison as a place for health requires greater attention. Semi-structured interviews with 35 young men managing well in a prison, reveal how they stitch together a range of tactics to navigate the prison system through a process of invisibility and vigilance to the cracks in the system whilst appropriating objects and seeking out spaces of comfort. Understanding the lived experience of imprisonment in this nuanced approach provides greater insights into the interplay of health and place with the potential to inform context-relevant practice and policy.