Coming Home From Jail: The Social and Health Consequences of Community Reentry for Women, Male Adolescents, and Their Families and Communities
01 Oct 2005-American Journal of Public Health (American Public Health Association)-Vol. 95, Iss: 10, pp 1725-1736
TL;DR: This study of the experiences in the year after release of 491 adolescent males and 476 adult women returning home from New York City jails shows that both populations have low employment rates and incomes and high rearrest rates.
Abstract: Each year, more than 10 million people enter US jails, most returning home within a few weeks. Because jails concentrate people with infectious and chronic diseases, substance abuse, and mental health problems, and reentry policies often exacerbate these problems, the experiences of people leaving jail may contribute to health inequities in the low-income communities to which they return. Our study of the experiences in the year after release of 491 adolescent males and 476 adult women returning home from New York City jails shows that both populations have low employment rates and incomes and high rearrest rates. Few received services in jail. However, overall drug use and illegal activity declined significantly in the year after release. Postrelease employment and health insurance were associated with lower rearrest rates and drug use. Public policies on employment, drug treatment, housing, and health care often blocked successful reentry into society from jail, suggesting the need for new policies that support successful reentry into society.
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: It is of major importance that action is taken to improve the conditions of everyday life, beginning before birth and progressing into early childhood, older childhood and adolescence, during family building and working ages, and through to older age, to reduce inequalities in physical health and improve health overall.
Abstract: A person's mental health and many common mental disorders are shaped by various social, economic, and physical environments operating at different stages of life. Risk factors for many common mental disorders are heavily associated with social inequalities, whereby the greater the inequality the higher the inequality in risk. The poor and disadvantaged suffer disproportionately, but those in the middle of the social gradient are also affected. It is of major importance that action is taken to improve the conditions of everyday life, beginning before birth and progressing into early childhood, older childhood and adolescence, during family building and working ages, and through to older age. Action throughout these life stages would provide opportunities for both improving population mental health, and for reducing risk of those mental disorders that are associated with social inequalities. As mental disorders are fundamentally linked to a number of other physical health conditions, these actions would also reduce inequalities in physical health and improve health overall. Action needs to be universal: across the whole of society and proportionate to need. Policy-making at all levels of governance and across sectors can make a positive difference.
768 citations
Cites background from "Coming Home From Jail: The Social a..."
...Yet there are other social determinants of mental health that could be articulated, including inadequate or unequal access to transportation (5); exposure to violence, conflict, and war in childhood or adulthood (6); mass incarceration and poor relations between law enforcement and communities (7); environmental air, water, or land pollution (8); climate change (9); sexism and other forms of non–race-based discrimination; and adverse or unsupportive features of the workplace....
[...]
TL;DR: Exposure to infectious disease and stress are important to understanding the lasting impact of incarceration on health, and a distinctive pattern of association emerges.
Abstract: This article examines the relationship between incarceration and health functioning. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the relationship between incarceration and more than 20 different measures of health are tested. Using multiple analytic procedures, a distinctive pattern of association emerges. Individuals with a history of incarceration appear consistently more likely to be afflicted with infectious disease and other illnesses associated with stress. In contrast, no consistent relationships were observed between incarceration status and ailments unrelated to stress or infectious disease. The results suggest that exposure to infectious disease and stress are important to understanding the lasting impact of incarceration on health.
402 citations
TL;DR: It is recommended that public health and medical practitioners capitalize on the public health opportunities provided by correctional settings to reach medically underserved communities, while simultaneously advocating for fundamental system change to reduce unnecessary incarceration.
Abstract: An unprecedented number of Americans have been incarcerated in the past generation. In addition, arrests are concentrated in low-income, predominantly nonwhite communities where people are more likely to be medically underserved. As a result, rates of physical and mental illnesses are far higher among prison and jail inmates than among the general public. We review the health profiles of the incarcerated; health care in correctional facilities; and incarceration's repercussions for public health in the communities to which inmates return upon release. The review concludes with recommendations that public health and medical practitioners capitalize on the public health opportunities provided by correctional settings to reach medically underserved communities, while simultaneously advocating for fundamental system change to reduce unnecessary incarceration.
305 citations
Cites background from "Coming Home From Jail: The Social a..."
...What is changing is the rapid growth of its demographic minorities: older and adolescent inmates, and especially women, who have increased at twice the rate of male prisoners since the 1980s (31)....
[...]
TL;DR: This paper analyzed the origins and development of state felon disenfranchisement provisions and found that large nonwhite prison populations increase the odds of passing restrictive laws, and, further, that prison and state racial composition may be linked to the adoption of reenfranchisement reforms.
Abstract: Criminal offenders in the United States typically forfeit voting rights as a collateral consequence of their felony convictions. This article analyzes the origins and development of these state felon disenfranchisement provisions. Because these laws tend to dilute the voting strength of racial minorities, we build on theories of group threat to test whether racial threat influenced their passage. Many felon voting bans were passed in the late 1860s and 1870s, when implementation of the Fifteenth Amendment and its extension of voting rights to African‐Americans were ardently contested. We find that large nonwhite prison populations increase the odds of passing restrictive laws, and, further, that prison and state racial composition may be linked to the adoption of reenfranchisement reforms. These findings are important for understanding restrictions on the civil rights of citizens convicted of crime and, more generally, the role of racial conflict in American political development.
268 citations
TL;DR: This paper used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to estimate the impact of incarceration during late adolescence and early adulthood on short and long-term employment outcomes, and used broad measures of legal and illegal employment to explore possible avenues by which incarceration affects individual work histories.
Abstract: The research findings with respect to the relationship between incarceration and employment are consistent enough that it is tempting to conclude that incarceration causes deterioration in ex-inmates' employment prospects. Yet, causality remains tenuous for several reasons. For one, studies frequently rely on samples of nonincarcerated subjects that are not truly "at risk" of incarceration, which undermines their use as comparison samples and potentially biases estimates of the impact of incarceration on life outcomes. Additionally, even with confidence about causal identification, the field remains ignorant about the precise mechanism by which incarceration erodes employment and earnings. To address these gaps, this study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to estimate the impact of incarceration during late adolescence and early adulthood on short- and long-term employment outcomes. The subjects of interest are all individuals who are convicted of a crime for the first time, some of whom receive a sentence of incarceration following their conviction. Broad measures of legal and illegal employment are used to explore possible avenues by which incarceration affects individual work histories.
252 citations
References
More filters
Book•
18 Nov 2002
TL;DR: Minkler and Wallerstein this article provide evidence that the field of community-based participatory research (CBPR) has reached an important developmental point as a field, even if we cannot as yet agree on a single name.
Abstract: If Thomas Kuhn (1962) is correct, a field of inquiry develops in stages. Some members of a field of inquiry recognize anomalies in the foundational beliefs and seek better explanations of problems, such as health and economic disparities, and practices of inquiry about them. A few distinctive achievements or discoveries provide the new approaches greater legitimacy. Eventually, a critical mass of information and researchers develops and the alternative explanations and research practices offer canons of practice, which mark an advanced stage of the development of an emerging field of inquiry. This special issue of the Michigan Journal and Meredith Minkler and Nina Wallerstein’s edited volume, Community-Based Participatory Research for Health, offer evidence that the field of community-based participatory research (CBPR) has reached an important developmental point as a field. The forthcoming Community-Based Research and Higher Education: Principles and Practices (Strand, Marullo, Cutforth, Stoecker, & Donohue, 2003); the recently published The Handbook of Action Research (Reason & Bradbury, 2001); and Ernest Stringer’s recent work (1999) and forthcoming work on participatory action research in higher education provide further evidence that we have exemplars of the methods of participatory research and canons for their practice, even if we cannot as yet agree on a single name. Whatever the nuances among the terms, there is coherence. We are talking about research that
1,905 citations
01 Jan 2000
973 citations
"Coming Home From Jail: The Social a..." refers background in this paper
...Several studies show that postrelease employment reduces recidivism, drug use, and crime.(36,37) Finding jobs for released inmates could be an important priority for policy action, since there is evidence that employment interventions in correctional settings can reduce rearrest and criminal behavior....
[...]
TL;DR: For example, this article found that those aged 27 or older are less likely to report crime and arrest when provided with marginal employment opportunities than when such opportunities are not provided, while young participants, those in their teens and early twenties, reported little effect on crime.
Abstract: crimes? Prior research is inconclusive because work effects have been biased by selectivity and obscured by the interaction of age and employment. This study yields more refined estimates by specifying event history models to analyze assignment to, eligibility for, and current participation in a national work experiment for criminal offenders. Age is found to interact with employment to affect the rate of self-reported recidivism: Those aged 27 or older are less likely to report crime and arrest when provided with marginal employment opportunities than when such opportunities are not provided. Among young participants, those in their teens and early twenties, the experimental job treatment had little effect on crime. Work thus appears to be a turning point for older, but not younger, offenders.
961 citations
TL;DR: The prevalence rates indicate that a diagnosis of substance abuse is not gender specific, and to determine whether gender differences observed over the past 25 years become less demarcated in comparisons of younger cohorts of substance abusers in the future will be interesting.
849 citations
TL;DR: One of the greatest problems of deinstitutionalization has been the very large number of persons with severe mental illness who have entered the criminal justice system instead of the mental health system.
Abstract: OBJECTIVE: The presence of severely mentally ill persons in jails and prisons is an urgent problem. This review examines this problem and makes recommendations for preventing and alleviating it. METHODS: MEDLINE, Psychological Abstracts, and the Index to Legal Periodicals and Books were searched from 1970, and all pertinent references were obtained. Results and CONCLUSIONS: Clinical studies suggest that 6 to 15 percent of persons in city and county jails and 10 to 15 percent of persons in state prisons have severe mental illness. Offenders with severe mental illness generally have acute and chronic mental illness and poor functioning. A large proportion are homeless. It appears that a greater proportion of mentally ill persons are arrested compared with the general population. Factors cited as causes of mentally ill persons' being placed in the criminal justice system are deinstitutionalization, more rigid criteria for civil commitment, lack of adequate community support for persons with mental illness, m...
656 citations