(from the journal abstract) Psychiatry in prisons is at a crossroads. Confronted with the increasing severity of the sentences, it is also called upon to become involved in the management of compulsory and indefinite detention, decided in numerous legal systems on the basis of an assessment of the danger for society. Mentally ill patients raise an increasingly acute problem in prisons. They coexist with personalities that we refer to as psychopaths. Faced with these evolutions, the stake is not to allow the work of the psychiatrist to be defined and distorted merely by the requirements of increasingly extensive social control. The management of the contradiction between the confidentiality of the work of care and the exchange on what can be seen, understood and decided is an integral part of a tough and daily confrontation between prison partners. Such a confrontation could lead to the creation of a real collaboration in a network which respects the identities and the professional missions and leads to work on the sense. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved)