My project is concerned with the experiences and treatment of those incarcerated within women’s prisons across Scotland, Ireland, England & Wales. A history of poor mental health is one of the most common shared experience in prison (Angiolini, 2012). Despite this, mental health within prisons remains the most seemingly intractable issues. This research aims to examine whether ‘gender sensitive’ thinking should feed into penal design and policy, a gender responsive approach is one that aims to reflect – through design and services – the realities of women’s lives, addressing various social and cultural factors and the pathways that lead them to criminality.