Abstract
BackgroundStudies show that ex-prisoners often experience more health problems than the general population; unfortunately, these issues follow them upon their release from prison. As such, it is possible re-entry rates signal the need for neighborhood-based health care organizations (HCOs). We ask: are incarceration and re-entry rates associated with the availability of HCOs?.MethodsMethodsUsing 2008 Central Business Pattern data, 2008 prison admissions and release data, and 2000 and 2010 census data, we test whether prison admission and release rates impact the availability of HCOs net of neighborhood characteristics in Arkansas using Logit-Poisson hurdle models with county fixed effects.ResultsWe find that the incarceration and re-entry rates – together known as coercive mobility -- are related to whether a neighborhood has one or more HCOs, but not to the number of HCOs in a neighborhood.ConclusionFuture public policies should aim to locate health care organizations in areas where there is significant churning of individuals in and out of prison.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40352-015-0016-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Studies show that ex-prisoners often experience more health problems than the general population; these issues follow them upon their release from prison
Net of other neighborhood conditions, coercive mobility is a powerful predictor of health care organizations (HCOs) placement; outside of percent rural, it is the largest predictor of all HCOs
We look to whether the neighborhoods seeing individuals churn in and out of prison are stocked with the health care organizations these individuals will likely need to gain positive post-release outcomes like good health, substance abuse or mental health treatment, and criminal desistance
Summary
Studies show that ex-prisoners often experience more health problems than the general population; these issues follow them upon their release from prison. As such, it is possible re-entry rates signal the need for neighborhood-based health care organizations (HCOs). 800,000 people are released from prison each year (Carson and Sabol, 2012), and many of these individuals return to their communities with health problems. When prisoners re-enter communities, are just as likely in need of health care as when they enter prison. Prisoners likely come from impoverished areas and backgrounds where they had limited access to health care (Hipp et al, 2009; Kirk, 2009); as such, jails and prisons tend to inherit the health problems of those individuals (Potter, 2007).
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