While a broad debate on carceral geographies has been part of human geography and related disciplines in English-speaking academia, there are only scarce publications among German-speaking geographers. This special issue aims at bringing different researchers and their rich and diverse research insights in the carceral field into a dialogue.

The conditions of social work in prisons are seldomly researched. In particular, we focus on its spatial conditions as it works with and for people who are confined, but it is also carried out under conditions of confinement. Based on insights from two prisons in Switzerland we analyse these conditions by focusing on spaces, bodies and emotions. The materiality of the prison translates into the prison logics and enforces them in complex ways on the bodies of prisoners as well as social workers.