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Inequalities in healthcare for prisoners in Europe: a review
- Authors:
- MACDONALD Morag, WILLIAMS James, KANE David
- Journal article citation:
- Diversity and Equality in Health and Care, 9(4), 2012, pp.243-251.
- Publisher:
- Insight Medical Publishing
As a group, detainees are particularly vulnerable and face a range of health issues, some of which are associated with their offending behaviour. The principle of equivalence of healthcare, where standards in detention are equivalent to those in the community at large, is widely accepted but in practice many prisoners face difficulties in gaining access to effective healthcare. Provision is thought to be very different across the European member states and the point of arrest may be the first contact that the detainee has with any form of service or treatment. This paper is based on a six-country European comparative project on “Throughcare for Prisoners and Problematic Drug Use (coordinated by the lead author). Supplemented by data collected from previous work, it provides an analysis of the availability of healthcare for detainees in the criminal justice system and highlights the links between the provision of throughcare (continuity of care) and prisoners’ successful reintegration into the community. The authors use the prisoner’s journey as their framework. The key findings are that, at every stage of the prisoner’s journey, there are gaps in throughcare, allowing prisoners’ health problems to go undetected and untreated, which in many cases leads to offending behaviours, recidivism and the revolving door into the prison.