Medical power in prisons - Joe Sim

This book critically analyses the origins, development and consolidation of medical power in English prisons. It questions the assumption that professional medicine in prisons has evolved benevolently and independently, uncontested in its work and unbiased in its ideologies, policies and practices. The book presents an alternative analysis based on a critical reading of the work of Michel Foucault. It identifies the relationship between medical power and the confined in terms of discipline, regulation, containment and exclusion. It explores the differential impact of medical power in relation to deaths in custody, women in prison and forms of resistance to medical power which have been central to the development of medicine in prison since the late 18th century.;The historical evidence presented in the book raises significant theoretical and political questions concerning the strategies necessary to change long-established medical programmes and policies both behind and beyond the walls of the prison system.