Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners

In the past 30 years, the population of prisoners in the United States has expanded almost 5-fold, correctional facilities are increasingly overcrowded, and more of the country's disadvantaged populations&#8212racial minorities, women, people with mental illness, and people with communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis&#8212are under correctional supervision. Because prisoners face restrictions on liberty and autonomy, have limited privacy, and often receive inadequate health care, they require specific protections when involved in research, particularly in today's correctional settings. Given these issues, the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Human Research Protections commissioned the Institute of Medicine to review the ethical considerations regarding research involving prisoners. The resulting analysis contained in this book, Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners, emphasizes five broad actions to provide prisoners involved in research with critically important protections: &#8226 expand the definition of "e;prisoner"e;; &#8226 ensure universally and consistently applied standards of protection; &#8226 shift from a category-based to a risk-benefit approach to research review; &#8226 update the ethical framework to include collaborative responsibility; and &#8226 enhance systematic oversight of research involving prisoners.