Trust and the Use of Digital Social and Healthcare Services Among Incarcerated People: A Mixed Methods Study in Finnish Prisons

Abstract

Incarcerated people face many social and health challenges, and have particular support and rehabilitation needs. The digitisation of services enables the efficient provision of different services including those used during imprisonment. The objective of this study is to investigate the significance of trust in the use of digital social and healthcare services among incarcerated people. Many studies have found that trust has an effect on intention to use digital social and healthcare services; however, the matter has not been studied among incarcerated people. This study asks two principal questions: How do incarcerated people's levels of trust in the internet and social and healthcare services affect their intention to use digital services? What factors explain incarcerated people's levels of trust? A cross-sectional survey (n = 225) was carried out in 11 prisons in Finland and the results analysed using the Pearson product–moment correlation coefficient, a two-tailed t-test, and linear regression analysis. Since prisons are a quite unique context from the point of view of the use of digital services and there is no previous research on trust in digital social and healthcare services among incarcerated people, the statistical analysis was supplemented with qualitative interview data (n = 18). The study shows the importance of trust in relation to the use of digital social and healthcare services among incarcerated people. Previous use of services is positively associated with trust, and deficiencies in basic digital skills are negatively associated with trust. The qualitative analysis reveals that positive experiences of the trustworthiness of social and healthcare services do not always lead to affective trust. The community and social impact statement for this article can be found in the Supporting Information.