Objectives:

The objective is to know the relationship between age, time of incarceration, juridical situation, activity in prison, penitentiary classification and having or not children under eighteen years old, with the incidence of psychopathological symptoms of female inmates from a penitentiary in Lima.

Materials and methods:

The SCL-90-R was used to determinate the psychopathological symptoms in 388 female inmates. Correlations and comparisons were made.

Results:

Results show low negative correlation between age and depression, anxiety, hostility, psychoticism and PST; time of incarceration has a low negative correlation with depression, paranoid ideation and GSI. Comparisons show significant differences according juridical situation in interpersonal sensibility, depression, paranoid ideation, GSI and PSDI. According activity in prison differences were found in somatization, depression, anxiety, psychoticism, PST and GSI; and, according penitentiary classification differences were found in somatization, obsession compulsion, interpersonal sensibility, depression, anxiety, paranoid ideation, psychoticism, PST, GSI and PSDI. There were not differences between inmates with or without children under eighteen years old.

Discussion:

No overcrowding, accessibility of treatment, and cultural differences are related to the low scores obtained. The low correlations might be related to intermediate variables that were not observed and its recommended to observe in future research.

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