Prevalence of Mental Illnesses in U.S. State Prisons: A Systematic Review

Prins, Seth J.

doi:10.1176/appi.ps.201300166

Cited by 311 publications

(197 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…Besides their involvement in crime and low levels of schooling, people who serve time in prison suffer from high rates of mental illness and drug addiction (21,22). After prison release, the formerly incarcerated are often homeless or insecurely housed (23).…”

Section: Nonresponse In Disadvantaged Populationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study retention as bias reduction in a hard-to-reach population

Western

Braga

Hureau

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Collecting data from hard-to-reach populations is a key challenge for research on poverty and other forms of extreme disadvantage. With data from the Boston Reentry Study (BRS), we document the extreme marginality of released prisoners and the related difficulties of study retention and analysis. Analysis of the BRS data yields three findings. First, released prisoners show high levels of "contact insecurity," correlated with social insecurity, in which residential addresses and contact information change frequently. Second, strategies for data collection are available to sustain very high rates of study participation. Third, survey nonresponse in highly marginal populations is strongly nonignorable, closely related to social and economic vulnerability. The BRS response rate of 94% over a 1-y follow-up period allows analysis of hypothetically high nonresponse rates. In this setting, nonresponse attenuates regression estimates in analyses of housing insecurity, drug use, and unemployment. These results suggest that in the analysis of very poor and disadvantaged populations, methods that maximize study participation reduce bias and yield data that can usefully supplement large-scale household or administrative data collections. Under current conditions of historically high imprisonment rates, incarceration has become a regular part of the hardship associated with American poverty (4, 5). Men and women who go to prison present a range of co-occurring disadvantages and vulnerabilities that make them difficult to contact or unwilling to participate in research studies. Involvement in crime and the criminal justice system also makes study subjects elusive for researchers. As a result, follow-up studies of the formerly incarcerated have suffered from high rates of attrition that are likely correlated with outcomes of key interest. The incarcerated population has been called "invisible men" because of their underenumeration in social survey estimates of socioeconomic well-being (6). Because of their deep marginality in social and economic life, invisibility in social science data collection also extends to those who have moved from incarceration to communities.We explore survey nonresponse in a highly disadvantaged population using data from the Boston Reentry Study (BRS), a small longitudinal survey of newly released prisoners. Earlier longitudinal studies of released prisoners suffered from 30% to 60% attrition over a 1-to 2-y follow-up period (7,8). In contrast, the BRS followed Massachusetts state prisoners through the first year of prison release, achieving a response rate of 94%.The unusually high response rate allows us to explore three main challenges to research and data collection in highly disadvantaged populations. First, we document extreme social insecurity in the BRS sample that is closely associated with a high level of contact insecurity-the frequent changing of residential addresses and phone numbers that makes nonresponse more likely. Second, we describe a variety of strategies for data collection tha...

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Section: Nonresponse In Disadvantaged Populationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study retention as bias reduction in a hard-to-reach population

Western

Braga

Hureau

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Smoking rates may even increase during imprisonment (4). Rates of serious mental illness in the correctional system are also high, perhaps double the rate seen in the general population (5). Early mortality and high tobacco use rates have been well documented in the population with serious mental illness (6,7).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decreased Mortality Rates of Inmates With Mental Illness After a Tobacco-Free Prison Policy

Dickert¹,

Williams²,

Reeves³

et al. 2015

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“…It is well known that prisons are crowded with patients who are mentally ill. 15 Often these institutions are too overwhelmed to provide proper (if any) mental health treatment. The family may not report violent or abusive behavior in an attempt to keep their family member out of the justice system or to avoid any repercussions for someone already in it.…”

Section: The Legal System Is Not Always Sensitive and Helpfulmentioning

confidence: 99%