The Ethical Role Of Prisoners In Prisons

A prisoner, as defined by federal regulation is any individual involuntarily confined or detained in a penal institution and according to Belmont report, ethical principles for human subjects should abide to the autonomy, beneficence, and justice of the subject. Because the individual who is in prison his autonomy reduces, they are considered as vulnerable population and many restriction should be put in place before conducting a research involving prisoners. Looking back in history of medical researchers have taken the advantage of vulnerable population as an example, there is Tuskegee study, sterilization without consent, and Nazi human experimentation. All this past studies have brought a distrust toward medical Doctors and leading to questioning the credibility of clinical trials on prisoners.

The proposal of scholars that prisoner are target as research subjects for human clinical trial meant to address that prisoners might be exploited and that people should be more careful with that, and prevent exploitation of prisoners and …show more content…
Regardless, being in jail, prisoners have right like any other citizen so as long as someone want to get involved in research and make his/ her contribution, they should be allowed to get involved. Furthermore, this are the people who probably committed crimes like rape or murderer when they have life sentence penalty and don’t have another chance to live a normal life, it would be reasonable to use them in these research. In prison, someone would say that they are awarded for their crime as they stay in prison, not worried paying bills for rent or food, and free health care that’s why they should be used and make it legal so that people will avoid to make crime that put them in