Effects of place or neighborhood--locations where individuals reside, shop, recreate, and work--have been widely studied as sources of environmental influences on individual behaviors, exposures, and physiology, as well as reference points for public health interventions. However, despite modern prisons' strong influence on the transmission and clinical outcomes of infectious diseases, custodia...

Prisons are invariably unisex institutions where, besides many deprivations, heterosexual expression in its normal sense is absent. It is this characteristic that make prisons settings potentially fertile grounds for sexual aberrations. Since definite and accurate data concerning sexual activities among prison inmates are difficult to obtain, the phenomenon of sexual practices in prisons has tr...

I nfectious diseases can be transmitted readily within prisons due to close contact between prisoners. Tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS are two important causes of morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases worldwide [1, 2]; prisons have become reservoirs for these diseases in many settings. TB prevalence among prisoners worldwide can be up to 50 times higher than national averages [3, 4]. ...

Prisoners throughout the world are at a greater risk of infectious diseases compared to communities outside. Hepatitis C (HCV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and tuberculosis (TB) have attracted great attention because of their potential to cause great morbidity and mortality in prison populations. However, prisons are not closed worlds. Many people enter and leave prisons every day and ma...

The concentration of incarcerated individuals with mental health and physical problems in the United States has led to the labeling of jails and prisons as the “hospitals of last resort” for those unable to access healthcare services in the community. As funding for community behavioral health services has dwindled, the number of people with serious psychiatric conditions in the nation’s correc...

This article deals with punishment and prisons, in particular, the rehabilitative role of punishment in Italian prisons. This role is herewith specified: On the one hand, by sociological considerations on punishment and prisons, based on the studies of Clemmer and Goffman; on the other hand, by international rules and the Italian legislation, dating back to the Reform of the Penitentiary Code 1...

Background As one of the most important components of harm reduction strategy for high-risk groups, following the HIV epidemics, Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) has been initiated in prisoners since 2003. In this paper, we aimed to assess the advantages and shortcomings of the MMT program from the perspective of people who were involved with the delivery of prison healthcare in Iran.   Me...