Correctional Facilities: A Viable Community Health Practice Site for Students

One of the responsibilities of community health nursing is to provide health care to atrisk populations. The incarcerated population has been previously ignored, yet inmates constitute an aggregate of at-risk persons. A 1975 study of 641 inmates in 28 jails revealed that 12% had abnormal tuberculin skin test results, 6% had abnormal results for syphilis, and 60% experienced withdrawal symptoms from alcohol and drugs after being admitted to jail (Gapen, 1979). A 3-month study of 1,082 individuals processed through the South Carolina Department of Corrections Midlands Receiving and Evaluation Center revealed that over 4% had abnormal results for syphilis and 9% had positive reactions to tuberculin skin tests (> 10 mm; Midlands Receiving and Evaluation Center, 1986). Inmate populations have health problems that stem from the community. However, until the late 1970s, jails and prisons operated in isolation away from the scrutiny of the greater community. Health care for the inmates was generally at the prerogative of the correctional institution (Freeman & Heinrich, 1981). Health professional students had little contact with correctional facilities (Chaisson, 1981). Nursing's interest in prison settings began to emerge concurrently with society's interest in civil rights and the antiwar movement in the 1960s and 1970s (Dubler, 1979). This movement created an awareness of the prisoner's rights as a member of a minority and as an inmate. Landmark Supreme Court decisions addressed correctional health-care issues in the 1970s (Dubler, 1979). The mandate by the courts for adequate and reasonable health