Introduction

Mills, Alice and Kendall, Kathleen (2018) Introduction. In, Mills, Alice and Kendall, Kathleen (eds.) Mental Health in Prisons: Critical Perspectives on Treatment and Confinement. (Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology) Palgrave Macmillan. (doi:10.1007/978-3-319-94090-8).

Abstract

Prison populations worldwide have long experienced substantially higher levels of mental distress than the general population, but the existing literature has neglected critical perspectives on mental health in prisons. This chapter introduces a broader conceptualisation of mental health and outlines the book’s four key arguments; that imprisonment is likely to create or exacerbate mental health problems; that there are considerable tensions between the priorities of care and custody; that mental health issues cannot be separated from context and socially marginalised groups are more likely to experience both imprisonment and poor mental health; and that there is an urgent need to consider alternatives to imprisonment. It concludes with a short description of the structure of the book and the main arguments of each chapter.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Download statistics