Creating REAL MEN: Description of an Intervention to Reduce Drug Use, HIV Risk, and Rearrest Among Young Men Returning to Urban Communities From Jail

Abstract

This article describes the life circumstances and risk behaviors of 552 adolescent males returning home from jail. Most young men reported several sources of support in their lives and many had more tolerant views toward women and intimate relationships than portrayed in mainstream media. They also reported high levels of marijuana and alcohol use, risky sexual behavior, and prior arrests. Investigators designed the Returning Educated African American and Latino Men to Enriched Neighborhoods (REAL MEN) program, a jail and community program to reduce drug use, HIV risk, and rearrest. By helping participants examine alternative paths to manhood and consider racial/ethnic pride as a source of strength, REAL MEN addressed the assets of these young men as well as their challenges. Our findings suggest that interventions that emphasize the assets of these young men may be better able to engage them than programs that seek to impose adult values.

Through Our Eyes: Exploring African-American Men’s Perspective on Factors Affecting Transition to Manhood

“…Our findings support prior research that suggest public health interventions that address challenging contextual factors in pathways to manhood and build on community assets may lower risk for unhealthy behaviors for young, urban African-American men. 35,36 For example, in a health intervention described by Daniels et al, young men reentering the community after incarceration not only received health information to reduce drug use, HIV risk, and repeat arrest, but were also provided resources for employment and educational opportunities. 36 Our results also suggest that primary care physicians who care for young, African-American men must be aware of these contextual influences and the community resources that can support current and future physical and emotional well-being.…”

Public Health and the Epidemic of Incarceration

“…Former prisoners are 12 times more likely than the general public to die of any cause in the 2 weeks following release and 129 times more likely to die of a drug overdose (14, 75, 77). Some of this postrelease mortality is due to “compassionate release” of the dying (77), but much of it reflects the instability of circumstances in the days following release and the concomitant return to high-risk behaviors (14, 20, 22, 32). Released inmates frequently struggle to find housing and work and to re-establish family and social relations.…”

HIV in the Epicenter of the Epicenter: HIV and Drug Use Among Criminal Justice Populations in New York City, 1980–2007

“…To date, these programs have reached no more than a quarter of the eligible populations, demonstrating the difficulty of implementing programs at a scale that achieves population health impact (Montero, 2007). Recently, some reentry programs have focused on HIV prevention for adolescents returning from New York City jails, a group with low HIV infection rates compared with jailed adults but higher rates of risk behavior than their nonincarcerated peers (Daniels, Crum, Ramaswamy, & Freudenberg, 2009). …”