Health Promotion Effectiveness in Prisons: Proposal of New Organizational Models, Clinical Practice and Forensic Considerations

Dear Colleagues,

Health protection in prison and secure settings is a continuing challenge in public health, requiring evidenced-based approaches in political and sociological debates at a global level.

Prison health is a complex and multifaceted area of work that requires a comprehensive and strategic approach. Prisons serve as unique settings where individuals who have come into contact with the criminal justice system find themselves confined, often facing various health-related issues.

Prisoners should have access to the same standard of medical care as people living in the community. Countries vary considerably in their criminal justice systems, prison services and resources; however, international organizations recommend that governments should ensure prisoners’ health protection, whether in temporary custody or final confinement.

The WHO strongly recommends that prison and public healthcare be closely linked, due to the high prevalence of people with severe conditions within prison populations, who, when released, will return into the community carrying untreated conditions with them; prison healthcare can also play an important role in reducing health inequalities.

However, healthcare workers engaged in providing care in in prison and secure settings are aware of the many barriers to provide standard quality of care service within these settings, as the environment presents with unique difficulties to manage, both for prisoners and healthcare staff.

Areas of improvement that guarantee a healthy prison environment are epidemiological investigation, clinical management, and care pathway design and implementation, nutrition, inmate mortality, prison life, relations with the judiciary system and clinical risk management.

To gain full health protection, features related to physical suffering from aggression, injury from unjust compulsivity or unjust detention and death in prison are relevant too.

The need to continually improve prisoners’ mental and physical health should undoubtedly be a priority for all governments.

Given the importance of the topic, the journal Healthcare is launching a Special Issue focusing  and discussing  all aspects of this complex topic, collecting original investigations, case series and case reports, and reviews in all branches of medicine, clinical and forensic toxicology, pharmacology, psychiatry, rehabilitation, forensic medicine, forensic pathology and criminology.

This Special Issue aims mainly to provide an overview of the research paths on health in prisons and secure settings, including emerging perspectives such as gender, precision medicine and AI interface as potential implementation strategies in such settings.

Similar submissions dealing with clinical and forensic aspects of other sciences and social sciences are also welcome, as are submissions relating scientifically sound emerging science disciplines.

Dr. Giulio Di Mizio
Dr. Francesca Romana Pezzella
Prof. Dr. Massimo Clerici
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• prison health systems across the world
• risk factors for health
• prison environment
• prison healthcare systems and governance
• inmate and mental illness
• rehabilitation in mental illness
• rehabilitation of prisoners
• inmates and infectious diseases
• drugs and/in prison
• disabled prisoners
• prison workers and their protection
• prison medicine
• COVID-19 and prison
• feeding in prison
• medical responsibility in penitentiary medicine
• clinical risk management in penitentiary medicine
• compatibility of the prisoner's health conditions with imprisonment
• suicidal risk assessment in prison
• CSI in prison
• inmate autopsy
• innovative methods of expert investigation in prison and of prisoners
• torture in prison: medico-legal investigation
• medical liability in prison medicine
• precision medicine in prison
• clinical pathways in prison
• artificial intelligence in prison healthcare
• telemedicine in prison healthcare