Understanding Mass Incarceration offers the first comprehensive overview of the incarceration apparatus put in place by the world’s largest jailer: the United States. Data sets that ask retrospectively about incarceration histories rarely ask about the precise timing or duration of multiple incarcerations, making these resources difficult for precise covariate control and consideration of etiologic lags.
Equally important, multilevel perspectives can center structural racism and inequitable distributions of incarceration across race/ethnicity, gender, and social class and their intersections. Your gift will support The New Press in continuing to leverage books for social change. Rather than addressing harm after it has happened, they can identify less punitive solutions to preventing crime that consider the poverty, racism, and political disenfranchisement that cause many individuals to turn to crime as a means of survival.Public health researchers, practitioners, and activists should confront policymakers with the research on population health and health equity impacts of mass incarceration.
Enter your email address below and we will send you the reset instructionsIf the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to reset your password.After decades of punitive social policies driving up incarceration rates, the number of lives affected by the US criminal legal system is unprecedented. Please make a tax-deductible donation today!Stay connected! Although counties are a relevant geographic level for the determinants of incarceration rates (e.g., local laws, policing, and judicial practices) and there is marked variation in county-level incarceration rates, aggregation at the county level is too high to reveal neighborhood or social network impacts. Evaluating the health impacts of incarceration on families and communities prompts the question of whether mass incarceration is actually improving the public’s well-being, let alone public safety.
To fully examine the impacts on population health and health inequities, it is critical to understand the relationships between incarceration, employment policies, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, the foster care system, and other social policies.Given the way incarceration intersects with many other determinants of health, for both incarcerated and nonincarcerated individuals, it follows that incarceration might matter for critical public health research and practice considerations; these include equitable program and policy implementation, study retention, and treatment adherence.