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The purpose of this paper is to describe the parameters for the development of performance measurement of the quality of medical care behind bars, drawing from widely‐published free‐world clinical guidelines and aspects of care that are unique to the criminal justice arena.

One way to help assure that prisoners receive timely and appropriate health care is through independent review of health care services, to identify strengths of programs and opportunities for improvement. This is a quality of medical care assessment. When done in a systematic way, this has the potential to reduce risk of harm and enhance the personal health of the prisoner and improve the public health. Independent external review provides the best opportunity to identify and remedy opportunities for improvement. “External” can mean wholly independent or “corporate,” that is, review by agency staff that has no vested interest in the findings at the individual facility. Recently, the methodology for assessment of the quality of medical care in the community has blossomed, yet there is little guidance on how to adapt this methodology to the prison setting.

This paper introduces a prison‐oriented method for assessing clinical performance. To the extent possible, the author cites references to the scientific basis for the recommendations. Where there is no science, the author relies as much as possible on consensus, and in a few cases resorts to “wisdom and experience,” as unreliable as this might be. This is a conceptual paper with a viewpoint.

The paper provides guidance on reducing risk of harm and promoting improved health and health care for prisoners.

This review integrates and builds linkages among existing theoretical and empirical literature from across disciplines to further broaden our understanding of the relationship between inequality, imprisonment, and health for black men. The review examines the health impact of prisons through an ecological theoretical perspective to understand how factors at multiple levels of the social ecology interact with prisons to potentially contribute to deleterious health effects and the exacerbation of race/ethnic health disparities.

This review finds that there are documented health disparities between inmates and non-inmates, but the casual mechanisms explaining this relationship are not well-understood. Prisons may interact with other societal systems – such as the family (microsystem), education, and healthcare systems (meso/exosystems), and systems of racial oppression (macrosystem) – to influence individual and population health.

The review also finds that research needs to move the discussion of the race effects in health and crime/justice disparities beyond the mere documentation of such differences toward a better understanding of their causes and effects at the level of individuals, communities, and other social ecologies.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss five domains impacted by the transformation of correctional mental health care in the USA: public health, public safety, legal obligations, fiscal responsibility and ethical standards, as well as critical issues such as administrative segregation, suicide prevention and reentry planning.

In the last four decades, the USA has seen a sizable growth in its criminal justice system and corrections population. It has also seen reductions in civil and community-based mental health care. Persons with mental disabilities have come to represent a highly disproportional segment of the corrections population. The paper discusses the implications and underlying causes of these developments as well as recent responses to them.

This set of circumstances is starting to change the mission of correctional health services from crisis intervention and suicide prevention to include preparation for the inmate's almost inevitable return to the community.

Such changes have led to further developments in correctional mental health care, in particular, policy designed to treat mental illness, reduce its destructive outcomes such as suicide, and facilitate successful reentry into the community in attempts to reduce recidivism and improve clinical outcomes. Mental health care professionals working within corrections have likewise faced ethical challenges in effectuating treatment.

ORIGINS THE Department of Aeronautical Engineer‐ing at The Queen's University was founded primarily to stimulate the flow of local talent into the aircraft industry of Northern Ireland. With the transfer of the whole of the resources of Short Brothers and Harland to Belfast in 1947 and their subsequent development, the aircraft industry had come to represent a considerable fraction of the engineering effort of the Province. It was thus to be expected that the only University in Northern Ireland should concern itself with the special needs of this exacting branch of engineering. The University had long had a School of Engineering forming part of a Faculty of Applied Science and Technology. The engineering disciplines were civil, mechanical and electrical, and the mechanical courses in particular had been adapted to some extent to meet aeronautical needs. But it was only natural that there remained a demand for a separate department, providing a degree course devised specifically for aeronautical engineers. In the event the Department of Aeronautical Engineering was established in 1956, after close consultation with Short Brothers and Harland, who have given it both generous support and willing co‐operation ever since.