Is the Healthcare Sector Part of a Carceral State?

In this chapter I take a different approach to most of the literature on healthcare corruption. I start by highlighting the links between medicalizationMedicalization and crime. To understand the impact of the healthcare sector's reach, we need to look beyond hospitals, etc. and question how we ‘treat’ those that encounter the criminal justice system and how the prison has supplanted the asylum as the site to contain and control people with mental illness. I thus consider the links between health outcomes and encounters with a criminal justice system and subsequent healthcare costs of crime and incarceration.  There are challenges in providing healthcare in prison as there is exposure to violence, communicable diseases and infections, but depending on the jurisdiction, most offenders are released and ex-prisoners' physical and mental health is thus an issue beyond institutional walls. Healthcare in prison is a public health issue that can affect us all, and as such access to healthcare, or lack of it, is a cause, conduit and/or potential avenue to poor healthcare outcomes.