Prison health care has aimed to provide
a service broadly equivalent to that of the
NHS in both scope and quality (Home
Office, 1990), but despite good-quality
care in some prisons – mainly smaller and
long-term institutions – failure to achieve
equivalence has been recorded in relation
to both health care generally (Reed&Lyne,
1997) and mental health care in particular
(Gunn et al, 1991; Health Advisory
Committee for the Prison Service, 1997;
Reed & Lyne, 2000)..