To the Editor: Approximately two million individuals are incarcerated in the United States. Correctional institutions currently house more individuals with serious and persistent mental illness than any other type of U.S. institution (1). Given the disproportionate incarceration of African-American men and the difficulty they experience in accessing mental health treatment services outside of c...

BACKGROUND Despite the growing recognition for the need to improve the health of prisoners in Canada and the need for health research, there has been little discussion of the ethical issues with regards to health research with prisoners in Canada. The purpose of this paper is to encourage a national conversation about what it means to conduct ethically sound health research with prisoners given...

There has been considerably less research on the management of adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among the inmates of correctional facilities than in the general community. While the successful identification and management of ADHD in the adult correctional setting offer potential benefits to the individuals themselves, to institutional staff, and to wider society, their imp...

In contrast to the position taken in the American Psychiatric Association's "Resource Document on The Use of Restraint and Seclusion in Correctional Mental Health Care," this commentary proposes limiting the use of mental health restraints to the stabilization of unsafe situations during the time it takes to transfer an inmate to a psychiatric hospital. Jails and prisons are inherently nonthera...

Correctional populations are disproportionately affected by conditions that affect cognition, such as psychiatric illness and head trauma. Honoring bioethical principles in the care of such patients can be particularly difficult in the correctional setting. However, the approach should not change markedly because a patient is incarcerated. That is, the same standards of respecting patient auton...

A humane and fair treatment of prisoners is of intrinsic value in itself, and is generally acclaimed to reduce prisoners' psychological distress and misconduct in prison, and their criminal behavior after release from prison. To create a more just prison climate, scholars have emphasized the importance of correctional staff. However, there is a lack of empirical research on the relationship bet...

The Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) is a relatively new personality assessment showing much promise in forensic and correctional settings. The present review examines correlations and effect sizes from a list of studies (n = 17) utilizing the PAI in these areas in order to provide concurrent validity with other psychological measures in the categories of (1) mental and perso...

OBJECTIVES To describe the issues encountered during the implementation of an indoor smoking ban in prison and its effects on self-reported tobacco use, perceived exposure to second-hand smoke (SHS) and perceived health status of inmates in Quebec's provincial correctional facilities. METHODS Quantitative data were obtained from 113 inmates in three provincial correctional facilities in the p...

OBJECTIVE To describe the development and initial evaluation of the Coping Course, a cognitive-behavioral group intervention designed to enhance general coping and problem-solving skills among incarcerated youth. METHOD Between 2001 and 2002, 76 male adolescents incarcerated at a youth correctional facility were assessed by questionnaire and randomly assigned to either the Coping Course (n = ...