Dramatic increases in the United States' inmate population has raised new concerns about prison crowding. Although growth in prison capacity has lagged slightly behind that of the inmate population, there is no consistent evidence that crowding is associated with mortality, morbidity (defined as clinic utilization), recidivism, violence, or other pathological behaviors. This paper reviews the m...

AIM To assess whether the introduction of a prison-based opioid substitution therapy (OST) policy was associated with a reduction in drug-related deaths (DRD) within 14 days after prison release. DESIGN Linkage of Scotland's prisoner database with death registrations to compare periods before (1996-2002) and after (2003-07) prison-based OST was introduced. SETTING All Scottish prisons. PA...

At yearend 2001 there were 1,319,000 adults confined in State or Federal prison and an estimated 4,299,000 living former prisoners. A total of 5,618,000 U.S. adult residents, or about 1 in every 37 U.S. adults, had ever served time in prison. Estimates of the prevalence of imprisonment in the U.S. population, presented here for the first time, are based on a demographic model incorporating rate...

The rapidly expanding population of prison inmates has severely challenged the prison system's ability to effectively screen incoming inmates for mental disorders and mental health service needs. This study describes a comprehensive mental health screening of inmates at a maximum security prison, using a modified version of the Referral Decision Scale (RDS), a screening measure developed from ...

A profile of the personal and professional characteristics of the physicians who work in America's prisons was obtained by analyzing data from a larger study of all licensed physicians in the United States who worked in a prison at least 12 hours a month during the fall of 1979. Psychiatrists were not included, nor were physicians working in jails. The population of 382 prison physicians compri...

BACKGROUND Positive attitudes towards prisoners are important in securing the effectiveness of various correctional rehabilitation programs and the successful reintegration of prisoners after release. We wanted to investigate the attitudes towards prisoners among prison inmates, prison employees and college students. METHODS The Attitudes Toward Prisoners scale was completed by 298 inmates in...

BACKGROUND Rates of tuberculosis (TB) transmission in prisons are reported to be high worldwide. However, a recent systematic review identified only 19 published studies reporting TB incidence in prisons, most of them from the last century and only one from sub-Saharan Africa. OBJECTIVES To assess the persisting risk of smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) among prison populations bene...

OBJECTIVES To describe and evaluate a pilot methadone maintenance program for heroin-dependent inmates of Las Malvinas men's prison in San Juan, Puerto Rico. METHODS Data from self-report of inmates' drug use before and during incarceration, attitudes about drug treatment in general and methadone maintenance in particular, and expectations about behaviors upon release from prison and from tes...

1. In December 1996, a 25-year-old remand prisoner had haemoptysis. Police contacted the communicable disease doctor on call who arranged for him to be seen at a hospital chest clinic where open pulmonary tuberculosis was diagnosed by radiography and sputum culture. He was notified and commenced on anti-TB therapy, prescribed and supervised by the chest clinic (Case 1). He was soon released fro...