The Isaac Ray Center, a private, nonprofit institute for forensic psychiatry and psychology, signed a contract with the Cook County Bureau of Health Services to provide mental health services to jail inmates. The contract also allows for conducting research with the jail population. In discussing ethical and legal issues relevant to such research, this paper notes that history confirms the need for special protections for individuals in "total" institutions where coercion to accede to the requests of authority figures, including medical researchers, may be inherent in the setting. The Isaac Ray Center's novel venture in the "privatization" of mental health services in the Cook County Jail raises the likelihood that research projects will be proposed to study the "captive" population covered by the service contract. Given that this population is even more "vulnerable" than the general jail population, special caution should be exercised in the design and approval of any studies. Acknowledging the need for a heightened level of protection for this population does not, however, imply that research should be altogether banned. The preservation of voluntariness, informed consent, and confidentiality are the dominant ethical and legal concerns for jail inmates who choose to participate in behavioral or biomedical research. 92 footnotes