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To the Editor: Prisoner injury has received little attention in the medical literature, but available data suggest that it is a prevalent problem. A surveillance project in the Michigan Department of Corrections reported an annual rate of 505.7 injuries per 1000 prisoners from April 1994 through March 1995.¹ In the Hawaii correctional facilities, annual injury rates averaged 683 per 1000 prisoners from 1992 to 1996 (K.M.T., unpublished data, 1997). Intentional injuries (prisoner-prisoner, prisoner-guard, and self-inflicted) represented approximately one fifth of all injuries in these 2 prison systems.

Prison systems collect and maintain data about their prisoner populations, but the degree to which prisoner injury data are collected has not been documented. This study assessed the extent of prisoner injury monitoring by US prison systems.

Methods

In 1997, a survey about prisoner injury monitoring was mailed to the 52 US jurisdictions operating prison systems: 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the . . . [Full Text of this Article]