In the United Kingdom (UK), government policy urges involvement of patients in their care and in health-related research. Women prisoners have considerable health needs and constitute an important "patient" group. This study explores women prisoners' perceptions of health and illness to consider the extent to which they differed from those of lay people. Thirty-seven women participated in six f...

Ex-prisoners' recidivism risks are high. Several theories state that employment can reduce these risks but emphasize that the protective role of employment is conditional on job qualities (work intensity, job duration, etc.). Longitudinal research on the role of employment in ex-prisoners' recidivism patterns is scarce, and most existing work used a simplistic employment measure (i.e., employed...

In previous articles I have set out the challenges of providing healthcare in prisons and have examined the problems in British prisons of elderly prisoners, women prisoners, and prisoners with mental disorders. In this final article of the series I highlight how prison contributes to the treatment of people who are “hard to reach.” Many British prisoners come from the most economically deprive...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of mental disorders among prisoners is considerably higher than in the general population. This is an important public health issue as the vast majority of prisoners stay in custody for less than 9 months and, when not in prison, offenders' lifestyles are frequently chaotic, characterized by social exclusion, instability and unemployment. Multi-disciplinary mental heal...

We examined, first, differences in dispositional and situational coping, and psychological distress between political ex-prisoners and their matched controls, and second, coping effectiveness in protecting mental health from impacts of imprisonment and military trauma. Thirdly, we tested the hypothesis that compatibility ("goodness of fit") between dispositional and situational coping would pre...

The study investigated the effects of time spent in prison and quality of life before prison on male, federally sentenced prisoners’ adaptations to imprisonment, controlling for sentence length and prison security level. Data consisted of responses on a self-administered survey completed by 712 prisoners. Findings tended to support the independent effects of the indigenous (deprivation) and imp...

BACKGROUND AND AIM Prisons in Egypt do not currently screen for blood-borne viruses, and there are no statistics concerning the prevalence of hepatitis C virus, hepatitis B virus or human immunodeficiency virus among prisoners. This study was performed to detect the prevalence of antibodies against hepatitis C, hepatitis B core and human immunodeficiency virus among Egyptian prisoners. METHOD...

BACKGROUND older prisoners are a fast-growing group but there is limited evidence for how well their needs are being met. OBJECTIVES to quantify the social and custodial needs of older prisoners and suggest improvements for service provision. DESIGN cross-sectional study. SETTING twelve prisons holding adult males in North West England. SUBJECTS two hundred and sixty-two prisoners; 97 a...

1 Family is affected and involved in the prison sentence. It affects everybody close. (Anonymous prisoner) Researchers have only begun to explore the far-reaching effects of imprisonment beyond prison walls. Unintended consequences highlighted so far include: the social disorganisation of communities (Clear et al 2001); reduced job opportunities for ex-prisoners (Holzer et al 2004); diversion o...

BACKGROUND Over 90% of the organs transplanted in China before 2010 were procured from prisoners. Although Chinese officials announced in December 2014 that the country would completely cease using organs harvested from prisoners, no regulatory adjustments or changes in China's organ donation laws followed. As a result, the use of prisoner organs remains legal in China if consent is obtained. ...