Subject Area: Criminology

Prisoners, community-based offenders, and other detainee groups exert huge, social, health and economic impacts on the community and pose significant challenges for society. Those in contact with the justice system endure some of the worst health outcomes in the community in terms of mental illness, substance misuse, traumatic brain injury and infectious diseases (e.g. HIV and viral hepatitis). Many of these can be attributed to the social determinants of health and lifestyle factors including injecting drug use, alcohol abuse, sexual risk behaviours, body piercing, tattooing and violence. Contact with the justice system, including incarceration, presents an important opportunity to intervene and improve health outcomes of hard-to-access populations.

Significant overlap exists between public health and criminology in terms of offender rehabilitation as the criminogenic needs of this population are also public health priorities that operate in a complex legal, human rights, research, and policy environment.

In this course you will learn about the complex health needs of those in contact with the justice system and the importance of these for offender rehabilitation. Experts in this field (e.g. a former prisoner, prison administrator, prison doctor and prisoner support worker) will present and discuss the challenges and controversies in prisoner and offender health (e.g. harm reduction strategies in prison, treatment of the mentally ill in the justice system), researching offenders, ethical dilemmas, health service delivery in prison, and prevention and intervention strategies. A visit to a prison will provide an opportunity to reflect on some of these issues.