Health in Prison: Does Penitentiary Medicine in Italy Still Exist?
, Vito Fiore 2, Filomena Casella 3, Sergio Babudieri 2,4, Luciano Lucania 4,5 and Giulio Di Mizio 6
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript is interesting and valuable.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
We want to thank the reviewer for the attention shown to our work and the interesting comments that are certainly useful for numerous and future studies and research that may be published. We agree with his reflections and we hope that articles like this one can raise the attention on these issues which are so important and fundamental for a democratic society.
Reviewer 2 Report
The text fits the scope of Healthcare as a whole. The theme is interesting and is well addressed by the authors. The structure of the paper is adequate and is what one expects from a serious, rigorous scientific work. The abstract, keywords and introduction are informative. The overview of the relevant literature is very up to date, no doubt, a great plus of the paper. The text is well interspaced with many high quality international journal references with 5 years or less, denoting the authors proficiency about the subject. Methodologically all procedures are correct and there is nothing to point as weaknesses (note that some quantitative hard data would enrich the text). The conclusion section, although a bit short, fulfills its role. In this section however, regarding future work, the authors must include a reference for the need of further study of sex differences regarding health in prison, given the profound unbalance between the numbers of male and female inmates (a reference like this one does the job: Pereira, S. P. M., & Correia, P. M. A. R. (2021). The Sustainability of the Portuguese Prison System: A Criminal Justice System in Masculine Form? Social Sciences, 10(1), 19. DOI: 10.3390/socsci10010019).
Nevertheless, I specifically address those questions below:
The topic of the paper is moderately original and adds, in an incremental fashion, to the subject area published material. However it is not a disruptive paper. The text is relatively clear and easy to read. Finally, it is important to note that the conclusions are, in my perspective, consistent with the evidence and arguments presented and that the authors address the main question posed at the beginning of the text.
There are some flaws in the formatting of the references, but that can be easily overcome during the editing phase.
Author Response
we want to thank the reviewer for the attention shown to our work and the suggestions that have allowed us to improve it.
We have inserted the requested modification together with the references which in fact deals with a very important aspect of prison life and on which it is good to reflect and study more.
