UC Merced Library

The following is a literature review addressing the importance of access to healthcare and the quality of it specifically within the prison system. The focus of it is to explore general health care access within the prison system; acknowledging the following problems; lack of access to health care & medical care; recidivism and its relationship to mental illness, as well as what is being done to improve access to healthcare. The obtained scholarly sources presented here coincided that there is a great lack of access to medical and health care treatment within the prison system. Where inmates do have access to medical and health care treatment, the quality of it was poor and the access extremely limited. A gap that presented itself within the scholarly sources used was research or scholarly sources which focused on how the lack of access to the appropriate medical and health care treatment within the prison system is being address. As well as gender specific access to medical and healthcare treatment and the quality of it too.