ABSTRACT
Psychiatrists who step into a correctional setting enter a mire of ethical dilemmas. Many of these issues derive from the need to reconcile conflicting interests of the patient, society, and the profession. Of course, some of these ethical conflicts in psychiatry are not unique to practice in the correctional system. Of all categories of physicians, it is probably the psychiatrist working in the non-correctional setting who is most often called on by society to jeopardize the treatment interests of a patient and perhaps limit his or her rights, in order to protect society or individuals from the dangerous behavior of that patient. In fact, it might be argued (Szasz 1963) that in requiring that psychiatrists make decisions about involuntary commitments on grounds of dangerousness to others, or in demanding that they make Tarasoff-type decisions about dangerousness, society has involved all psychiatrists in correctional work, whether or not they are formally employed by a correctional system.
