This work, entitled “Sentence and care: an investigation of space and time among sick prisoners”, raises the question of the prison sentence through the prism of illness. The study goes to the heart of different worlds that are juxtaposed: the worlds of prison, healthcare, and the prisoner. With a solid empirical foundation based on extensive observation and interviews with prisoners and the professionals working in this environment, an anthropology of space and time is here in proposed. The approach deals with the way prisoner-patients, the prison staff, and the healthcare professionals attempt to orient their activities around the disease,within the confines of the prison, and in the hospital setting. The activities in these different environments are also analysed with regards to the temporal horizon of the prisoner’s release,which is threatened by the time of disease and death. Spatial and temporal constraints, the qualification of the different persons, objects, places, and rhythms are all at the centre of this“socio-anthropological” reflection. The analysis provides some insights into the experience of serious illness, which upsets the aims attributed to prison sentences and the sense of justice.Through this “dual ordeal” we can see the outline of how humans are constructed.