After reviewing the use of isolation in US prisons and public restrooms to confine transgender people in solitary cells and single‐occupancy bathrooms, I propose an explanatory theory of eliminative space. I argue that prisons and toilets are eliminative spaces: that is, spaces of waste management that use layers of isolation to sanctify social or individual waste, at the outer and inner limits of society. As such, they function according to an eliminative logic. Eliminative logic, as I develop it, (...) involves three distinct but interrelated mechanisms: 1) purification of the social center, through 2) iterative segregation, presuming and enforcing 3) the reduced relationality of marginal persons. By evaluating the historical development and contemporary function of prisons and restrooms, I demonstrate that both seek to protect the gender binary through waves of segregation by sex, race, disability, and gender identity. I further argue that both assume the thin relationality of, in this case, transgender people, who are conceived of as impervious to the effects of isolation and thus always already isolable. I conclude that, if we are to counter the violence of these isolation practices, we not only need to think holistically about eliminative spaces and logic, but also to richly reconceptualize relationality. (shrink)

This paper describes a pilot study devoted to developing the teaching of philosophy within prison education in Scotland. The study paired the CoPI approach to learning and teaching with a set of educational resources created around a high-profile MOOC that introduced students to core topics in philosophy. The primary goal of the study was to determine the extent to which the teaching of philosophy in prisons in this specific manner could enhance the intellectual virtues, and thereby the intellectual character, (...) of the students. The results that were collected suggested that the project generated significant success on this front. In addition, the study had a further consequence, which had not been anticipated, in that it also helped the students to develop important personal and interpersonal skills, and thereby also enhanced their character more generally. (shrink)

Several critics have argued that private prisons are not only problematic because of their worse effects but also intrinsically wrong. This article analyzes two prominent arguments for this claim: the representation argument and the condemnation argument. The conclusion is that these arguments fail to show that there is something intrinsically wrong about private prisons. This is especially true if the arguments are extended to non-profit private prisons under social injustice contexts that states are responsible for. In such (...) cases, non-profit private prisons might not only be on a par with public prisons but be preferable to them. However, the arguments are also insufficient to oppose every conceivable for-profit private prison. (shrink)

In the first part of this essay, I develop the argument that Michel Foucault's work should be read with geographical and topological ideas in mind. I argue that Foucault's archeology and genealogy are fundamentally determined by spatial, topological, geographical, and geometrical metaphors and concepts. This spatial dimension of genealogy is explicitly related to racism and the regimes that domesticate agents through the practices, institutions and ideologies of racialization. The second part offers a genealogical reading of US history and spatiality in (...) terms of its racial institutions. I suggest that if we want to read the US geographies of topographies and cartographies of racism in a Foucauldian manner, then we must focus on plantations, ghettos, and prisons as the spaces‐institutions‐geographies that consolidated the racial matrix of US polity. My goal is to acculturate Foucauldian racial genealogy to the US racial matrix, and, conversely, to read US geo‐history in terms of racializing spatialities. (shrink)

Why do public philosophy in prisons? When we think about the value and aims of public philosophy there is a well-entrenched tendency to think in transactional terms. The academy has something of value that it aims to pass on or transmit to its clients. Usually, this transaction takes place within the confines of the university, in the form of transmission of valuable skills or knowledge passed from faculty to students. Public philosophy, construed within this transactional mindset, then consists in (...) passing on something valuable from inside the academy to the outside. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences of taking philosophy into prisons and argue that making the case for public philosophy in general, and philosophy in prisons in particular in these transactional terms risks obscuring what we take to be a distinctive and valuable outcome of public philosophy. Importantly, it risks obscuring what those who participate in a particular kind of public philosophy – including the professional philosophers – experience as valuable about the activity: its transformational potential. (shrink)

Background: The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the deficiencies that characterize the functioning of the Italian national health system. Prisons have always mirrored the most radical expressions of these weaknesses. During the early stages of the pandemic, prison facilities across Italy underwent a series of changes dictated by the need to ensure the safety of the prisoners and staff. The adoption of these rules contributed to a total or partial redefinition of many central facets of life in prison, such (...) as intake procedures for new arrivals and the ways prisoners were allowed to communicate with their families.Objectives: The aim of this qualitative study was to analyze the testimony of penitentiary healthcare workers in prisons throughout Italy to determine the impact of COVID-19 on their professional and personal lives.Participants: Thirty-eight participants were contacted and 20 decided to participate in the interview. The sample was made up of 10 women and 10 men. All the participants were members of the healthcare staff of a penitentiary facility. All were recruited through an Italian association whose mission is the development, promotion, and implementation of social solidarity projects including prisoners' social and health care. This study was facilitated through representatives serving in nine different regions of Italy. The participants were divided according to their professional roles in prisons.Method: In-depth interviews were conducted by telephone or online using telecommunication platforms. The transcribed texts underwent thematic analysis using the Atlas.ti software to identify patterns of meaning across the dataset.Results: Four main themes emerged from the analysis: Interpersonal difficulties, management and operational difficulties, the personal distress and bereavement of healthcare workers, and the distress of inmates. The importance of relationship management skills when interacting with prisoners emerged as a key topic in many interviews, and the participants highlighted the need for adequate training. The increase in prisoners' anxiety made communication more difficult.Conclusions: The findings suggest that healthcare workers in jails need emergency-oriented training. Participants described their feeling of loneliness and quasi-abandonment when carrying out their duties during the pandemic. In particular, they underscored the need for psychological guidance to better manage altered reactions with prisoners and colleagues as a result of heightened death anxiety and isolation. (shrink)

This book brings together a collection of social justice scholars and activists who take Foucault’s concept of discipline and punishment to explain how prisons are constructed in society from nursing homes to zoos. This book expands the concept of prison to include any institution that dominates, oppresses, and controls. Criminologists and others, who have been concerned with reforming or dismantling the criminal justice system, have mostly avoided to look at larger carceral structures in society. In this book, for example, (...) scholars and activists question the way patriarchy has incapacitated women and imagine the deinstitutionalization of people with disabilities. In a time when popular sentiment critiques the dominant role of the elites, the state’s role in policing dissenting voices, school children, LGBTQ persons, people of color, and American Indian Nations, needs to be investigated. A prison, as defined in this book, is an institution or system that oppresses and does not allow freedom for a particular group. Within this definition, we include the imprisonment of nonhuman animals and plants, which are too often overlooked. (shrink)

This chapter addresses questions about commodification in the sphere of security and prisons. It surveys potential forms of commodification and considers arguments that aim to show that they are morally wrong or unjust. The chapter considers the relationship between commodification and privatization. It examines economic, legal and moral commodification arguments against private prisons and prison labor. The economic arguments against private prisons considered here focus on efficiency and perverse incentives. The legal arguments focus on dignity and the (...) commodification of the person. The moral arguments focus on human equality and corruption of important goods. The arguments against prison labor begin with the question of whether prison labor is market activity and then consider the possibility that prison labor may contribute to mass incarceration. The moral arguments focus on exploitation. The chapter also considers the relevance of the racial dimension of mass incarceration to arguments about commodification. (shrink)

Le contexte des prisons africaines offre amplement matière à revisiter l’idée classique de l’inutilité de certaines criminalisations. Dans un monde plus que jamais dominé par le spectacle des châtiments et des modèles de justice expéditives, il est bienvenu de replacer le rôle de l’éducation dans la prison, puisque tout détenu emprisonné, aussi démuni et à plaindre soit-il, est riche de son temps, et capable de résilience et de perfectionnement. Encore faut-il, sous peine de paraître très idéaliste, dessiner de manière (...) convaincante les lignes directrices de la rédemption par la formation et les études dans le cadre de la prison. Les prisons ne sont pas des mouroirs, tel est le leitmotiv de l’entretien passionnant entre sept spécialistes des prisons dans l’enceinte de la prison de Libreville et le truchement de l’œuvre de Diangitukwa et de Siadous. (shrink)

This essay argues that publicity is a necessary precondition for both politics and philosophy. Against the backdrop of the traditional dismissal of publicity as a leveling of difference, the author develops Foucault’s positive use of publicity in the Prisons Information Group as a technique of differentiation. The essay therefore proceeds in four parts: 1) it contextualizes the Prisons Information Group within Foucault’s life and work, 2) it identifies four specific modes of publicity utilized by the group, 3) it (...) argues that, through these modes, Foucault embraces classically troublesome elements of publicity (like noise, superficiality, and anonymity) as expressly transformative, and 4) it develops a consequently positive account of Foucauldian leveling. The essay concludes that publicity involves the collective transmigration of thought, word, and deed requisite to both the political and philosophical life. (shrink)

Marshall and colleagues (2024) contribute to the literature on autonomy and decision-making capacity by focusing on the case of individuals with opioid use disorder who refuse to remain in the hosp...

Formed in the wake of May 1968, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) was a radical resistance movement active in France in the early 1970's. Theorist Michel Foucault was heavily involved. This book collects interdisciplinary essays that explore the GIP's resources both for Foucault studies and for prison activism today.

Prison as a Torturous Institution Philosophers working on torture have largely failed to address the widespread use of torture in the U.S. prison system. Drawing on a victim-focused definition of torture, I argue that the U.S. prison system is a torturous institution in which direct torture occurs (the use of solitary confinement) and in which torture is allowed to occur through the toleration of sexual assault of inmates and the conditions of mass incarceration. The use and toleration of torture expresses (...) and reinforces the moral exclusion of those subjected to it, particularly African Americans. Importantly, this moral exclusion and the experience of torture may be created and reinforced through institutional practices independently of the intentions of individuals acting within those institutions. By prioritizing torture victims’ experiences and severing the link between torture and intention, my account forces a recognition that, far from being inconsistent with U.S. values, torture is deeply embedded within U.S. institutions. (shrink)

In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Tommie Shelby evaluates arguments for and against the elimination of incarceration as a mode of punishment. In this article, we discuss and expand upon Shelby's arguments, using two very different systems—those of Norway and the United States—as examples to illustrate some general principles.

Is capitalism inherently predatory? Must there be winners and losers? Is public interest outdated and free-riding rational? Is consumer choice the same as self-determination? Must bargainers abandon the no-harm principle? Prisoners of Reason recalls that classical liberal capitalism exalted the no-harm principle. Although imperfect and exclusionary, modern liberalism recognized individual human dignity alongside individuals' responsibility to respect others. Neoliberalism, by contrast, views life as ceaseless struggle. Agents vie for scarce resources in antagonistic competition in which every individual seeks dominance. This (...) political theory is codified in non-cooperative game theory; the neoliberal citizen and consumer is the strategic rational actor. Rational choice justifies ends irrespective of means. Money becomes the medium of all value. Solidarity and good will are invalidated. Relationships are conducted on a quid pro quo basis. However, agents can freely opt out of this cynical race to the bottom by embracing a more expansive range of coherent action. (shrink)

Prisons are a feminist issue. This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical work on prisons, examples of important contributions, and future directions for feminist work in the field. It does so, however, in a way that consciously deploys a feminist methodology that resists the replication of hierarchical norms and structural violence in the very doing of theory and history. In this spirit, it emphasizes the record of struggle across the prison’s history, the (...) resistance efforts that live behind individual academic theories, the conceptual frameworks generated by groups bearing the brunt of carcerality, and it investigates alternative strategies of harm reduction developed across those communities. The chapter closes with an explicit exploration of prison abolitionism, which works not only to radically rethink punishment but also to shift the locus of voice and leadership. In so doing, the chapter aims to review, as much as to create anew, a feminist theoretical analysis of prisons. (shrink)

Abstract:This article analyzes the pervasive practice in US carceral institutions of shackling incarcerated pregnant women during childbirth and postpartum. After a review of bioethical, civil, and human rights norms, which widely condemn the practice, I advance an interpretation of the social meaning of shackling imprisoned pregnant women and its persistence despite widespread normative consensus in favor of its abolition. Two arguments regarding the persistence of the practice are considered: (1) that it stems from the unthinking exportation of prison rules to (...) a hospital setting and (2) that it is the product of an androcentric approach to punishment and carceral health care ill-adapted to women’s needs. I argue that these explanatory frameworks are inattentive to the intersecting genealogies of race and gender that are constitutive of the practice. As a result, the prescriptive horizons that these frameworks delineate are inadequate to the race- and gender-specific task of redress. Drawing from Black feminist theory and Nietzsche, I argue that the practice of shackling imprisoned pregnant women, like many ostensibly race-neutral facets of American mass incarceration, is a sedimentation of slavery that impacts all incarcerated women. The practice is symptomatic of the persistent anti-Blackness of the criminal legal system and the unfinished project of American abolition. (shrink)

In 1997, the United States incarcerated over 1.7 million persons in local jails and in state and federal prisons. These inmates are disproportionately poor and persons of color. Many lack adequate access to health care before incarceration and present to correctional services with major unaddressed medical problems.Convictions for drug possession and use have increased the number of injection drug users with HIV and AIDS in prisons. Determinate sentencing and “three strikes and you’re out” laws have increased the number (...) of inmates who are aging and dying during their sentences. Their feelings reflect those of Larry Rideau, sentenced to life without parole and founder of The Angolite—an award-winning prison newspaper at Louisiana's Angola Prison—“The dream of getting out, you equate with heaven. Dying in prison you equate with hell.”. (shrink)

Historically developed along gender lines and arguably the most sex segregated of institutions, U.S. prisons are organized around the assumption of a gender binary. In this context, the existence and increasing visibility of transgender prisoners raise questions about how gender is accomplished by transgender prisoners in prisons for men. This analysis draws on official data and original interview data from 315 transgender inmates in 27 California prisons for men to focus analytic attention on the pursuit of “the (...) real deal”—a concept we develop to reference a dynamic related to how gender is accomplished by transgender inmates. Specifically, among transgender inmates in prisons for men, there is competition for the attention and affection of “real men” in prisons: the demonstrable and well-articulated desire to secure standing as “the best girl” in sex segregated institutional environments. Our empirical examination sheds light on the gender order that underpins prison life, the lived experience of gender and sexuality for transgender inmates in prisons for men, and how that experience reveals new aspects of the workings of gender accountability. (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

This fifth volume of the Radical Philosophy Today series contains papers presented at the 7th Biennial Conference of the Radical Philosophy Association, 2006. Contributors include Karsten Struhl, Lisa Heldke, Amy Wendling, Tom Jeannot, John Exdell, C.W. Dawson, Tommy Curry, Dwayne Tunstall, Jason Mallory, Eduardo Mendieta, Brady Thomas Heiner, Mechthild Nagel, and Jeffrey Paris.

This study examines the violence inflicted upon Palestinians in Israeli prisons during the initial phase of the “Iron Swords” war, which commenced following a Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. It investigates how wartime circumstances can intensify the use of torture and ill‐treatment within prisons, with a particular focus on the impact on detainees who were not implicated in activities connected to the attack. Utilizing the case files of Palestinian security prisoners who lodged complaints of (...) mistreatment with Israeli NGOs, the study uses descriptive analysis to categorize and quantify diverse forms of reported violence that could potentially constitute torture. The study's findings reveal a concerning pattern: all 19 subjects reported experiencing violence from prison staff, with 18 of these cases involving physical violence. Multiple claims referenced more than one instance of violence, and eleven claims additionally reported violence against other detainees. The claims of violence spanned seven different prisons, underscoring the systemic nature of the issue. Reported methods of violence encompassed beatings, forced positioning in painful postures, threats, and humiliation, sometimes with sexual undertones, among other forms of abuse. Seven subjects had visible bruises and wounds, two suffered broken limbs, and one sustained a fractured tooth. These findings suggest a correlation between war, a decline in ethical standards, and the abuse of prisoners. By bringing these issues to light, the study advocates for evaluating prison practices and a commitment to upholding human rights standards, even during violent conflict and war. (shrink)

This chapter develops criteria of work and failure implicit within the Prisons Information Group (GIP). Reading the group’s documents in conjunction with the thought of Michel Foucault, the chapter asks: How did the GIP characterize work or attribute failure and how did Foucault understand both in this period? By analyzing these discursive practices together, the essay first identifies five criteria of failure: discursive, structural, systemic, deconstructive, and productive failure. Second, it tests the GIP against each criterion, marking where it (...) does and does not fail. The chapter therefore offers an internal assessment of the GIP, one that is sensitive to the movement’s own discourse and development. In closing, the chapter draws several implications from this analysis of failure for contemporary prison activism and analysis. (shrink)

In the classic abolitionist text, Prison on Trial, Thomas Mathieson argues that imprisonment cannot be justified by appeal to any standard punitive aim: rehabilitation, deterrence, incapacitation, or retribution. The aim of this paper is to give prison an ‘appeal hearing’: to examine whether it can be justified by a set of punitive aims not considered by Mathieson. In particular, it asks whether imprisonment can be justified by the ‘communicative’ theory of punishment proposed by Antony Duff. Duff sees imprisonment as having (...) an important role in a properly ‘communicative’ system of criminal justice: to serve as the ultimate sanction for offenders who fail to comply with other forms of punishment; to shock offenders into repentance for their crimes; and to communicate to offenders in a symbolically appropriate way the seriousness of their offence. This paper argues that each of Duff’s rationales fails: using prison as an ultimate sanction violates the communicative principle of treating offenders as responsible moral agents; the evidence suggests that prison will impede rather than facilitate repentant understanding; and while prison might be able to express censure, it is not rationally connected to enabling a meaningful moral dialogue. As such, it concludes that this particular appeal hearing for imprisonment fails. (shrink)

It is inevitable that some inmates in large state prison systems will suffer from terminal conditions and die while incarcerated. But how those inmates experience that event is primarily controlled by correctional policies and by the prison medical and correctional staff assigned to their care. Compassion for inmates who are dying cannot be legislated or mandated, but humane and compassionate care for the dying can be facilitated or thwarted by legislative and correctional policies, and by the manner in which correctional (...) personnel interpret those policies.Death in New York State prisons is a frequent event, occurring at a rate substantially higher than that in most other states. With a prison population that has risen to 70,000 inmates and with the nation’s highest rate of human immunodeficiency virus infection, more than 2,817 inmates died in New York prisons during the period 1990-1998. In April 1992, in the face of an ever-increasing death rate in its prisons, the New York State legislature passed the Medical Parole Law, a measure designed to permit dying inmates to be released on parole prior to their normal release eligibility date. (shrink)

Methadone maintenance therapy is a cost-effective, evidence-based treatment for heroin dependence. In the USA, a majority of heroin-dependent offenders are forced to detox from methadone when incarcerated. Recent research published in The Lancet has demonstrated the negative health and economic outcomes associated with such policies (Rich, J. D., McKenzie, M., Larney, S., Wong, J. B., Tran, L., Clarke, J. et al. (2015). Methadone Continuation Versus Forced Withdrawal on Incarceration in a Combined US Prison and Jail: A Randomised, Open Label Trial. (...) The Lancet, 386, 350–359). This novel evidence raises questions as to the justification for current policies of forced detox in American prisons. Opponents of methadone provision in prisons might offer arguments from retributivism, resource allocation and curative effectiveness to justify their position. This article contends that these arguments do not stand up to ethical scrutiny. In light of this, we hold that American policymakers should reform criminal justice policies to allow the initiation and continuation of methadone treatment in correctional settings. This would be consistent with both international recommendations and the example set by a number of other Western countries. (shrink)

Columbia University Press's multivolume _Prison Notebooks_ is the only complete critical edition of Antonio Gramsci's seminal writings in English. Based on the authoritative Italian edition of Gramsci's work, _Quaderni del Carcere_, this comprehensive translation presents the intellectual as he ought to be read and understood, with critical notes that clarify Gramsci's history, culture, and sources; an index of names; and a contextualization of the thinker's ideas against his earlier writings and letters. This set includes notebooks 1 through 8 with all (...) attendant notes and materials and is an indispensible resource for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Radical Democracy:John Dewey and Angela Y. Davis on Pluralism and PrisonsAmanda Dubrulein 2013, the multiculturalism act marked its 25th anniversary; at the same time, the Office of the Correctional Investigator (OCI) was celebrating its 40th anniversary (Elizabeth qtd. in Eng 2–3) The OCI was created in response to the prison riot in Kingston Penitentiary that occurred in 1971. Yet, 40 years after, prisons in Canada still face "overcrowding, (...) the shortage of professional staff, programming cuts, the confinement in the institution of a number of people who did not require maximum security confinement, too much time spent in cells, a lack of adequate channels to deal with complaints" (Elizabeth qtd. in Eng 3). The "Annual Report on the Operation of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act 2019–20" (subtitled "Building a Better Canada Through Diversity") lists four principal objectives of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act: "the retaining and fostering of identity …, overcoming barriers to participation …, promoting exchanges, and language acquisition" (Canadian Heritage 10; emphasis added). One can then see that there is a marked disconnect between the ideals of plurality and participation that Canada supposedly rests on and the practices of the systems it maintains.Drawing on John Dewey's conception of democracy and Angela Davis's critique of the prison industrial complex, I aim to show that a state cannot truly be pluralistic or participatory while continuing to engage in carceral practices. To do so, I will first explicate Dewey's conception of democracy,1 then I will lay out the contemporary problems surrounding incarceration in Canada, and, finally, I will end with a discussion of abolition as a constructive practice.Discussions of democracy often center on the mechanisms of voting. We have formed the habit of believing that democracies will carry on as long as citizens perform rote political duties (Dewey, "Creative Democracy" 225). Yet, as Dewey saw and as we continue to see, a healthy democracy cannot [End Page 40] be maintained through rote action alone. Instead, it requires "conscious and resolute effort" because democracy is not a mere political system ("Creative Democracy" 224). Instead, as Dewey phrases it, it is a "way of life" and therefore has moral implications. A democracy cannot flourish where there is no community (Dewey, "Creative Democracy" 225). This is accomplished through dialogue and debate with others and the recognition of the transactional nature of associated living. The purpose of a state is to supply the "right conditions" so that every person can lead their life and flourish in their own capacity (Dewey, "Creative Democracy" 227).The public is composed of individuals who act and associate with each other; every individual is "subject to all kinds of social influences which determine what they can think of, plan and choose" (Dewey, The Public 115). Yet when people come together and discuss their wants and needs, new ideas are tested, and new beliefs are formed. This creates an unsettling of current modes and processes of political action (Dewey, The Public 103).2 Thus, Dewey argues that one of the main tasks required for maintaining (and reclaiming) democracy is the constant "discovering [of] means by which a scattered, mobile, and manifold public may so recognize itself as to define and express its interests" (The Public 174). For this to occur, the creation and recognition of community is central. For Dewey, community is not merely "physical and organic" (though it often is this), it is also "moral … emotional, [and] intellectual" (The Public 177–78). For the individual, who becomes a part of this association, democracy involves the responsibility of sharing with others the "capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which one belongs and in participating according to the need in the values which the group sustains" (Dewey, The Public 175). For the group, democracy "demands liberation of the potentialities of [its] members" to flourish "in harmony with the interests and goods which are common" (Dewey, The Public 175). The flourishing of the group can only come about when we, as individuals, recognize the worth and potential of those around us and our capacity, when combined to direct the community, as a community.Thus, critique plays an important role in democracies: we... (shrink)

As these opening quotes acknowledge, the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) represents a core puzzle within the formal mathematics of game theory.3 Its rise in conspicuity is evident figure 2.1 above demonstrating a relatively steady rise in incidences of the phrase’s usage between 1960 to 1995, with a stable presence persisting into the twenty first century. This famous two-person “game,” with a stock narrative cast in terms of two prisoners who each independently must choose whether to remain silent or speak, each advancing (...) self-interest at the expense of the other and thereby achieving a mutually suboptimal outcome, mires any social interaction it is applied to into perplexity. The logic of this game proves the inverse of Adam Smith’s invisible hand: individuals acting on self interest will achieve a mutually suboptimal outcome. However, as this chapter illuminates, the assumptions underlying game theory drive this conclusion. (shrink)

Imprisonment may sometimes be a justified form of punishment. Yet the U.S. carceral system suffers from appalling problems of justice—in who is put into prisons, in how imprisoned people are treated, and in downstream personal and community health impacts. Medical personnel working in prisons and jails take on risky work for highly vulnerable and underserved patients. They are to be lauded for their professional commitments. Yet at the same time, prison care undercuts the ability of medical personnel to (...) uphold their own professional standards and sometimes fails in even basic health protection. Doctors in prisons are stuck between their commitment to vulnerable patients and complicity in a system that requires their participation to uphold its constitutionality. Medical ethics is frayed in prisons, and the problem deserves our attention. (shrink)

Background Respect for human rights and bioethical principles in prisons is a crucial aspect of society and is proportional to the well-being of the general population. To date, these ethical principles have been lacking in prisons and prisoners are victims of abuse with strong repercussions on their physical and mental health. Methods A systematic review was performed, through a MESH of the following words (bioethics) AND (prison), (ethics) AND (prison), (bioethics) AND (jail), (ethics) AND (jail), (bioethics) AND (penitentiary), (...) (ethics) AND (penitentiary), (prison) AND (human rights). Inclusion and exclusion criteria were defined and after PRISMA, 17 articles were included in the systematic review. Results Of the 17 articles, most were prevalence studies (n.5) or surveys (n.4), followed by cross-sectional studies (n.3), qualitative studies (n.1), retrospective (n.1) and an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study design (n.1). In most cases, the studies associated bioethics with prisoners’ access to treatment for various pathologies such as vaccinations, tuberculosis, hepatitis, HIV, it was also found that bioethics in prisons was related to the mental health of prisoners, disability, ageing, the condition of women, the risk of suicide or with the request for end-of-life by prisoners. The results showed shortcomings in the system of maintaining bioethical principles and respect for human rights. Conclusions Prisoners, in fact, find it difficult to access care, and have an increased risk of suicide and disability. Furthermore, they are often used as improper organ donors and have constrained autonomy that also compromises their willingness to have end-of-life treatments. In conclusion, prison staff (doctors, nurses, warders, managers) must undergo continuous refresher courses to ensure compliance with ethical principles and human rights in prisons. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss three representative works by Dalit writers—Bama’s Karukku, the first autobiography by a Dalit woman, Baby Kamble’s memoir, The Prisons We Broke,...

The United States has the fastest growing prison population in the world, and elevated incarceration rates, substance use, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevalence are fueling each other. Yet without a national guideline mandated for HIV care within the prison system, standards for state and federal prisons vary greatly.

A groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France’s inhumane treatment of prisoners. Founded by Michel Foucault and others in 1970–71, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) circulated information about the inhumane conditions within the French prison system. Intolerable makes available for the first time in English a fully annotated compilation of materials produced by the GIP during its brief but influential existence, including an exclusive new interview with GIP (...) member Hélène Cixous and writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Genet. (shrink)

The opioid epidemic has claimed the lives of more than 183,000 individuals since 1999 and is now the leading cause of accidental death in the United States. Meanwhile, rates of incarceration have quadrupled in recent decades, and drug use is the leading cause of incarceration. Medication-assisted treatment or MAT is the gold standard for treatment of opioid use disorder. Incarcerated individuals with opioid use disorder treated with methadone or buprenorphine have a lower risk of overdose, lower rates of hepatitis C (...) transmission, and lower rates of re-incarceration. Despite evidence of improved outcomes, many jails and prisons do not offer MAT to individuals with opioid use disorder. This seems partly due to a scientifically unjustified preference for an abstinence-only treatment approach. The absence of MAT in prisons and jails results in poor outcomes for individuals and poses a public health threat to communities. Furthermore, it disproportionately harms poor communities and communities of color. Health care providers in prisons and jails have an ethical obligation to offer MAT to individuals with opioid use disorder to mitigate risk of infectious diseases, opioid overdose and health disparities associated with incarceration. (shrink)

Prostitutes, shoplifters, vagrants, murderesses—Dodge tracks the history of such "improper" women as she explores the history of female incarceration in Illinois from 1835 to the present. In court and in prison, these women—some who are considered beyond all hope of reformation—have received vastly different treatment than their male counterparts. A woman's fate in court often hung on officials' estimates of her moral and sexual reputation. Alleged promiscuity, illegitimate births, venereal disease, interracial relationships, or use of alcohol could condemn her in (...) the eyes of judge and jury. Ethnic and social prejudice played a role, too, as most incarcerated women poor, workingclass, immigrants, or members of a racial minority. In women's prisons, the slightest misbehavior—from poor table manners to inappropriate dress—could lead to disciplinary action. Guards vigilantly monitored female friendships, suspecting lesbianism in the most innocent acts. Instead of creating docile and dutiful subjects, such treatment stirred resistance among the prisoners and fostered a powerful inmate subculture. Highly readable yet theoretically sophisticated, _"Whores and Thieves of the Worst Kind"_ provides a striking collective portrait of incarcerated women. Drawn from extensive primary sources, the voices of female prisoners emerge powerfully and poignantly as individuals tell their stories. (shrink)