Women in prison often have more health problems than male prisoners. As indicated before, many have chronic and complex health conditions resulting from lives of poverty, drug use, family violence, sexual assault, adolescent pregnancy, malnutrition and poor health care (Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, 2006; WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2007a). Drug-dependent women offenders have a higher prevalence than male offenders of tuberculosis, hepatitis, toxaemia, anaemia, hypertension, diabetes and obesity (Covington, 2007). Mental illness is overrepresented among women in prison, as 80% have an identifiable mental disorder. Two thirds have post-traumatic stress disorder (Zlotnick, 1997) and two thirds a substance-related.
