Health and Justice: Framing incarceration as a social determinant of health for Black men in the United States

Abstract

There has been growing interest in improving the health of Black men and the social determinants of health affecting them. In this paper, we argue that incarceration is an important social determinant of health in contemporary U.S. society for Black men and their families. Mass incarceration has deleterious health effects for those directly affected by it (the incarcerated), and mass incarceration contaminates the communities where it is geographically concentrated. Given the enormous differences in exposure to incarceration for Black men, this group is the most burdened by its effects. By extension, the larger Black community is disproportionately impacted due to the cascading effects of incarceration for families and neighborhoods. Therefore, it is necessary to include incarceration in research and policy addressing the health of Black men in the United States.

The body in isolation: The physical health impacts of incarceration in solitary confinement

“…Htm#requests. We confirm the authors have no special access privileges others would not have to the data underlying our study, beyond patient negotiations with the Washington department of corrections about exactly what data would be shared for what purposes are often over-represented in solitary confinement relative to their (over)representation in the general prison population [40][41][42][43][44]. Any concentrated health disadvantages affecting people in prison, and especially people of color, is potentially even more concentrated among those living in solitary confinement.…”

“…Incarceration has also been shown to exacerbate chronic illnesses such as obesity [35], hypertension, and asthma [36,37,29], and formerly incarcerated people experience disparately adverse health outcomes more generally [38]. The interaction between the disparate impacts of race and incarceration on health mean that mass incarceration itself has been identified as a social determinant of health for Black men in the United States [39,40].…”

The Global Impact of the Pandemic on Institutional and Community Corrections: Assessing Short-Term Crisis Management and Long-Term Change Strategies

“…This is because people who are incarcerated are more likely than people in the community to have chronic underlying health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease, chronic liver disease, and lower immune systems from HIV (Maruschak et al, 2015). Correctional settings also have dramatic effects on psychological and physical health, subjecting people to higher rates of infectious disease and medical neglect; exacerbating or causing mental health conditions; and hastening death (Brinkley-Rubinstein et al, 2019;Cloud, Bassett et al, 2020;Nowotny & Kuptsevych-Timmer, 2018;Patterson, 2013). In the era of COVID-19, this places inmates, staff members, and the outside community at a nonnegligible risk of contracting and spreading the virus, which can lead to hospitalizations and death.…”

Solitary Confinement and Health

“…Individuals released from prison experience a higher risk of death compared to non-incarcerated individuals [1,2]. The transition back into the community postrelease is characterized by instability related to social and economic factors that contribute to poor access to housing, employment, and health care [3,4]. While this connection between incarceration and death has been demonstrated, little is known about the effect of specific conditions of confinement on mortality.…”