NCJ Number
105349
Journal
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology Volume: 31 Issue: 1 Dated: (1987) Pages: 21-29
Date Published
1987
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This article examines the current use of private medical contracts to provide health care services to inmates incarcerated in State correctional facilities, with emphasis on the ideological and organizational issues underlying the policy debate in Florida.
Abstract
Evidence based on credentials suggests that penal physicians provide a lower quality of care than their better-trained counterparts in private practice. However, beliefs that privatizing medical services will improve the quality of care may not reflect realistic assessments of the process of change in penal medical care. In fact, many media sources report that private medical services in corrections have offered little improvement over their State-managed predecessors. Changes can be considered at the individual, institutional, and systemic levels and in terms of either the consensus model or the conflict model. Discussions of change have focused until recently on the first two levels. Systemic change has been more difficult to achieve. The resulting failures of both State and privately managed health services may well result from the incompatibility of medical and correctional goals. Correctional goals focus on security, while medical goals focus on health. The differences between these goals have led to divergent ideological stances, which cannot be reconciled merely by changing the equipment and quality of the health professionals. Figure and 18 references.