ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the requirements for "adequate, reactive" health care provision and the reality of the burden of the populations. The start of modern correctional health care is generally traced to the 1976 Estelle v. Gamble decision. Prior to that, healthcare and corrections were rarely mentioned in the same sentence. Subsequent Supreme Court decisions, the HIV/AIDS, drug resistant tuberculosis (TB), and hepatitis C (HCV) epidemics, and the expansion of health care professional opportunities in correctional settings have raised the profile of and concern with health care in jails, detention centers, and prisons. The United States correctional system is the most complex formal system in the world. While there are criminal statutes at the Federal level, the primary responsibility for the development of criminal law is left to the 50 states and territories. Colleagues in the public health academic and federal government arenas have devoted a great deal of attention to the "epidemiology of" a variety of diseases among correctional populations.
