ABSTRACT
Awareness of exploitative possibilities might be the most generous explanation for the reluctance of custodial personnel to be responsive to the health care requests of inmates. The conditions of incarceration may generate or exacerbate health hazards of various kindsthe spread of infection, psychological stress, inmate violence, and so on. The provision of correctional health care has little prestige attached to it, and in order to satisfy the demand for health services, correctional institutions have sometimes employed health care personnel who have been found guilty of criminal and/or unprofessional conduct. Perhaps the most difficult–but also most common–situations in which health care may need to be brokered will concern the mental health needs of inmates. There is some evidence that health care personnel may look at it in the same way, thus reinforcing the status quo and the dehumanized relationship that too often exists between correctional personnel and inmates.
