From Inquest:
In a study published in the medical journal The Lancet Public Health in February, a group of researchers from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health found that as jail incarceration rates rose in a sample of 1,094 counties in the United States, so did the rate of mortality due to several causes of death. After controlling for a number of potentially “confounding” factors, such as county median age and political control of the state legislature, they found that this association between jail incarceration and death in county residents was strongest for deaths due to infectious diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, substance use, and suicide.
The idea for this study, which adds to a growing body of research showing the harms of mass incarceration to entire communities, arrived on the heels of an earlier study, published in a special edition of the American Journal of Public Health, that had already drawn a link between jail incarceration and general mortality. As the nation grapples with other crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the plight of opioid overdoses, these findings underscore how our public health responses necessarily must account for how incarceration may be making matters worse for communities.
In this narrative essay, the lead researcher for the Lancet study, Sandhya Kajeepeta, explains some of the methodology behind it, why these new findings matter for decarceral policymaking, and where public health research in this area should be heading next. These insights, as shared with Inquest editor Cristian Farias over Zoom on Dec. 3, have been edited and condensed for clarity.
People sometimes think of detention facilities — prisons and local jails — as being out of sight and out of mind, and therefore concluding that our system of incarceration does not affect them. They may think it’s just affecting people who are incarcerated. Continue reading >>>
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