Medicine and Mass Incarceration

American jails and prisons are ripe for analysis by medical humanities scholars. Carceral institutions have been an especially salient feature of American history since the late-twentieth century, when U.S. incarceration rates began surging and culminated in what has come to be known as “mass incarceration.” This article suggests a handful of topics medical humanities scholars might consider in relation to mass incarceration, including correctional medical care privatization, the drug war, and HIV/AIDS, chronic diseases, women’s health, aging, and death in prisons. Medical humanities scholars might also consider the very phenomenon of mass incarceration a medical matter given that public health authorities have presented other social issues, such as loneliness and gun violence, as epidemics or public health crises. This article concludes by reiterating that America’s jails and prisons serve as de facto medical institutions and emphasizing linkages between the U.S. criminal legal system and the healthcare system. Attention to the historical dimensions of medicine and the U.S. carceral state in particular could help bring about overdue public reckonings over medically-enabled harms of mass incarceration.