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The dramatic expansion of the US penal system during the past 4 decades has led to an increase in adverse health conditions that affect an unprecedented number of individuals. This article first provides an overview of the literature on the immediate and lasting associations between incarceration and physical health, highlighting the diverse health conditions linked with incarceration, including health functioning, infectious disease, chronic conditions, and mortality. Next, we discuss potential explanations for the associations between incarceration and these health conditions, focusing on stress, contagion, social integration, and reintegration challenges. We then consider how medical and social science research can be combined to advance our understanding of these health conditions and suggest ways to reduce the negative association between incarceration and health, such as by improving prison conditions and medical care both inside prisons and after release.

This research uses specific diagnoses and symptoms of mental disorder (MDO) to predict whether inmates offend in prison. Social psychological theories of aggression are used to make predictions about what types of MDO affect whether inmates commit violent and nonviolent infractions. The analysis was based on a survey of a nationally representative sample of more than 16,000 inmates from state and federal facilities. The evidence suggests that psychosis and major depression have strong effects on infractions involving aggression, whereas the effects of anxiety disorders are weaker and inconsistent. Psychosis and depression are also associated with nonaggressive offenses, suggesting that they have disinhibitory effects on misconduct generally. Analyses of the effects of symptoms suggest that paranoid thinking is the best predictor of offending, particularly, offending that involves aggression. In general, the evidence suggests that both cognitive and emotional aspects of MDO lead to prison offenses.

Black civilians are more likely to be stopped by police than white civilians net of relevant factors. Less is known about whether or not racial inequalities exist in police use of force during stops. Using data on over 2 million police stops in New York City from 2007 to 2014 and drawing on literatures on race, policing, and the Black Lives Matter movement, we test hypotheses regarding the associations between race, civilian behavior, age, and police use of force. We also investigate whether recent reforms reduced any observed inequality in police violence during stops. Findings show that Black and White civilians experience fundamentally different interactions with police. Black civilians are particularly more likely to experience potential lethal force when police uncover criminal activity and this disparity is greatest for black youth compared to white youth. Overall, if there were no racial disparities in police use of force, we estimate that approximately 61,000 fewer stops of black civilians would have included police use of force and 1,000 fewer stops would have included potential lethal force from 2007 to 2014. Furthermore, while reform efforts substantially reduced the number of stops annually, inequalities in police use of force persist.

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