The Hastings Center Report: Series on Health and Incarceration
Incarceration has been intertwined with bioethics since the field’s founding: early protections of research subjects focused on incarcerated people as an especially vulnerable population deserving of heightened attention. But despite the clear impacts of carceral systems on public and individual health, bioethics has only begun to provide normative analyses of these systems and their effects. Although significant scholarship on the intersection of health and incarceration exists in related disciplines, especially public health, integrating these issues into mainstream bioethics is necessary to inform clinical ethics practice in health care systems serving currently and formerly incarcerated people. On the theoretical side, the urgent task is to evaluate challenges that incarceration may pose to existing theoretical frameworks and ethical priorities within the field of bioethics itself. Virtually any issue that arises in clinical and public health settings beyond prison walls, from population aging to the integration of AI-driven technology, also appears within them. But while the issues may be familiar, the unique constraints of the correctional system and the marginalization of incarcerated and previously incarcerated people demand redoubled attention to the specificities of this setting.
The Hastings Center Report, a bioethics journal, invites contributions to a new series on Health and Incarceration co-edited by Dr. Mercer Gary, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Drexel and HC Presidential Fellow, and Dr. Jennifer James, Assistant Professor of Social and Behavior Sciences at UCSF. The peer-reviewed series may include original articles (max 7,500 words), as well as essays (max 3500 words), case studies (max 2000 words), and first-person narratives of direct service providers (max 2000 words). Authors are encouraged to consider normative questions concerning the appropriate goals and practice of prison medicine, health impacts of incarceration, and access to health care services and continuity of care following incarceration. Pieces should attend to issues of racial, gender, and disability justice endemic in carceral healthcare and authors from groups under-represented in bioethics are strongly encouraged to submit. We will prioritize ethical analysis from currently and previously incarcerated people. Researchers from disciplines outside of bioethics are invited to submit normative research written for a general scholarly audience.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 500 words by January 31st, 2025 for consideration for inclusion in the series in 2025. Contact Mercer Gary at mercer.gary@drexel.edu with any questions.
