Carceral Systems Research Articles

Carceral Systems and Mental Health Crises-Health Care, Not Handcuffs.

Carceral Systems and Mental Health Crises-Health Care, Not Handcuffs.

Prevalent Adverse Childhood Experiences Among Young Adults Returning Home From Jail: The Need for Trauma-Informed Reentry Services.

Prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the extent to which they relate to health among young adults (ages 18-25) returning home from jail is underexamined. To build on the growing literature examining associations between ACE exposure among young people involved with carceral systems and health, we (1) measured ACE prevalence and (2) explored associations between ACEs and health/well-being indicators among young adults experiencing reentry. Using a telephone survey on reentry experiences, participants completed an ACE screening, single-item responses on health and social indicators, and five-item responses on substance misuse. Fisher's exact tests and t tests compared sociodemographic and health-related factors by the levels of ACEs. Among the 85 participants, 66 (78%) reported four or more ACEs and 48 (56%) reported six or more ACEs, including divorced parents (n = 69, 81%), witnessing violence (n = 63, 74%), and household member incarceration (n = 60, 71%). Higher exposure to ACEs was associated with mental health diagnoses, psychiatric medication prescriptions, psychiatric hospitalizations, drug dependence, binge drinking, and cannabis misuse. High ACE exposure among young adults experiencing reentry portends worse mental health and high rates of substance use. Findings signify an opportunity to apply a trauma-focused developmental framework to support emerging adults during the crucial reentry period.

Participation With Compensation: Ethical Considerations for Research Payment Practices With People Who Are Incarcerated.

The participation of incarcerated individuals in research is necessary to appropriately address the health disparities that affect them and to adapt and implement health services for the carceral setting. Incarceration significantly impacts health, leading to negative outcomes including accelerated aging and increased mortality, with these effects disproportionately impacting communities of color. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Human Research Protections outlines ethical approaches to compensating individuals who participate in research activities, yet lacks specific guidance for payment within carceral settings. Historical abuses in carceral research underscore the persistent need for robust protections for incarcerated research participants. Existing regulations offer some protection but inadequately address ethical payment practices. Substantial variability in payment policies across carceral systems and vague national guidelines pose ethical challenges in ensuring equitable treatment for incarcerated research participants. We outline the ethical concerns related to compensating incarcerated individuals for participating in research and present a framework of approaches to payment. We argue for payment parity between incarcerated and community research participants. More community-engaged research is needed to understand the perspectives of incarcerated individuals on ethical payment.

"We're Not Gonna Aid You in Shooting Up": Stigma's Relationship to Harm Reduction in People Who Inject Drugs.

Harm reduction, when applied to drug use, prioritizes improving patient-centered health outcomes and reducing drug-related harm. In order for harm reduction strategies to be adopted by people who inject drugs (PWID), they need to be promoted, accessible, and accepted in that population and the community-at-large. While PWID face stigma at multiple levels, less is known about how stigma influences uptake and acceptance of harm reduction services and strategies among PWID. We aim to characterize the stigmatizing experiences PWID have had related to harm reduction and the role of stigma in influencing their acceptance and adoption of harm reduction services and strategies. A qualitative study using in-person, semi-structured interviews. We recruited hospitalized participants, age 18 and over, with a history of injection drug use. We developed an interview guide asking about various aspects of stigma and participants' experiences with naloxone, syringe service programs, fentanyl test strips, HIV and hepatitis C testing, and any other harm reduction strategies. Key themes were generated using a thematic analysis. We reached thematic saturation at 16 participants. PWID reported multi-level stigma related to harm reduction from themselves, the public, the healthcare system, and the legal and carceral systems. Themes were grouped into four main categories: internalized, interpersonal, intervention, and structural stigma. Stigma across all of these domains negatively impacted the ability of PWID to access harm reduction resources. Positive, non-stigmatizing experiences from others, such as syringe service programs and peer navigators, countered historically negative experiences and promoted greater education and comfort about using harm reduction resources among PWID. To expand the reach of harm reduction services, it is critical to develop interventions that can reduce the stigma against PWID and harm reduction.

Policing Is Reproductive Oppression: How Policing and Carceral Systems Criminalize Parenting and Maintain Reproductive Oppression

Since the era of chattel slavery, the state has used institutionalized abuse and violence as a tool for reproductive control. Today, public institutions and social services have been established by the state to police and surveil the behavior of poor communities and parents to maintain the reproductive violence and oppression that began centuries ago. This paper uses a reproductive justice framework to explore how the history of criminalizing pregnancy, surveilling Black and Indigenous communities, and denying reproductive autonomy are connected to and maintained by the present-day family policing system. In doing so, this paper expands on existing literature to create a stronger link and build solidarity between the movements against family policing and reproductive oppression.

Letter to the Editor in response to the forgotten prisoners: diet and behaviour in carceral systems.

Letter to the Editor in response to the forgotten prisoners: diet and behaviour in carceral systems.

The forgotten prisoners: diet and behaviour research in carceral systems

The forgotten prisoners: diet and behaviour research in carceral systems

A Scoping Review of Organ Transplantation in Populations Experiencing Incarceration.

Despite an aging confined population, the current state of organ transplantation in carceral systems is largely unknown. This scoping review aimed to assess the literature on organ transplantation in populations experiencing incarceration. The review used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for a scoping review. Included references were published between January 2000 and January 2022 in PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature via EBSCO, EMBASE.com, PsycInfo via EBSCO, Sociological Abstracts via ProQuest, and Scopus. Two reviewers conducted title and abstract screening, full-text review, and data extraction in order to generate common themes. The initial search yielded 3,225 studies, and 2,129 references underwent screening. Seventy studies underwent full-text review, and 10 met inclusion criteria. These studies revealed heterogeneous perspectives and policies by providers and transplant centers regarding transplant consideration of individuals with incarceration history or current involvement. Two studies on a kidney transplant program for patients experiencing incarceration showed transplant as a sustainable and potentially superior option for people who are incarcerated, as compared with chronic hemodialysis. Literature on transplantation for populations experiencing incarceration is sparse. More research is required to understand the demand for transplants and the ethical implications of the heterogeneous perspectives and policies on practice patterns.

Abolition Dreams from a Resurgent Pu'uhonua

Abstract: This essay weaves an 'upena of critical discourse to contribute to a Kanaka Maoli abolitionist theory and praxis. Following the lead of Kumu Haunani-Kay Trask, I explore the intersection of the Black Radical Tradition and Critical Hawaiian Studies at the nexus of carcerality and multiple forms of Native and Black Dispossessions. Specifically, this essay builds upon Tiffany Lethabo King's The Black Shoals and George Terry Kanalu Young's Rethinking the Native Hawaiian Past to imagine and create freedom places beyond incommensurability. With a study of Pu'uhonua (places of refuge) I investigate the pilina (intimacies) between Indigenous resurgence and Black struggles for liberation and abolition. I argue that the comprehensive abolition of carceral systems and the ongoing resurgence of Pu'uhonua are cooperative projects that can be imagined and built upon the shoal and the Papa (reef/foundation) to create new futures for Black and Indigenous comrades in pursuit of collective liberation.

Beyond the Preamble: Legislating the right to self-determination in a NSW Human Rights Act

This article examines the inclusion of the right to self-determination in existing models of state and territory human rights legislation and proposes its inclusion in a future human rights act in New South Wales (NSW), to advance the rights of First Peoples in the criminal justice system. I explore how this would provide a mechanism for state restraint and a legal framework for prioritising self-determined First Nations critique, research and service delivery in carceral systems. The role of courts in holding the state to account and developing legal pluralism in rights jurisprudence is also discussed.

New horizons in criminal legal data: creating a comprehensive archive

While criminal legal involvement is a structural determinant of health, both administrative and national longitudinal cohort data are collected and made available in a way that prevents a full understanding of this relationship. Administrative data are both collected and overseen by the same entity and are incomplete, delayed, and/or uninterpretable. Cohort data often only ask these questions to the most vulnerable, and do not include all types of criminal legal involvement, when this involvement occurs in someone’s life, or family and community involvement. To achieve a more optimized data landscape and to facilitate population-level research on criminal legal involvement and health, (1) individual administrative level data must be made available and able to be linked across carceral systems, (2) a national data archive must be made to maintain and make criminal legal data available to researchers, and (3) a nationally representative, longitudinal study focused on those with criminal legal involvement is necessary. By beginning to critically think about how future data could be collated and collected, we can begin to provide more robust evidence around how the criminal legal system impacts the health of our society and, in turn, create policy reform.

Decriminalization or police mission creep? Critical appraisal of law enforcement involvement in British Columbia, Canada's decriminalization framework

The unregulated drug toxicity crisis in British Columbia (BC), Canada, has claimed over 14,000 lives since 2016. The crisis is shaped by prohibitionist policies that has led to the contamination of the unregulated drug supply, resulting in a surge of fatal and non-fatal overdose events. The criminalization of drug users exacerbates this situation, pushing individuals into carceral systems for the possession of and/or social practices related to drug use. This commentary examines the involvement of policing in the development, and throughout the first 15 months of its implementation, of BC's decriminalization framework. We highlight concerns regarding police discretion, the expansion of scope, and the interweaving of carceral logics into policies that purport to be public health-oriented.

Perpetual banishment: The transcarceral crimmigration case of Mary Masako Akimoto

AbstractThe case of Mary Masako Akimoto illuminates how carceral systems based on immigrant criminalisation, known as crimmigration, intersected with gendered notions of decent and indecent work in 1930s America. Mary Akimoto was deported from the USA in compliance with US anti‐sex trafficking law for the crime of selling sex in a brothel (indecent work). Yet, as part of her rehabilitation or as a requirement of her release in the months and years that followed her initial arrest, she regularly found herself in coerced labour situations engaging in vocations gendered as decent work.

Navigating the emotional terrain of prison reentry: State‐sanctioned gendered violence

AbstractThe emotional experiences of incarceration are directly tied to state‐sanctioned gendered violence. Most incarcerated women have a history of trauma, stemming directly from broader socio‐political and economic forces, which is further rendered throughout the incarceration and reentry process. The carceral system in the United States disrupts family and social support systems, fails to provide accessible and adequate mental health and substance use services, and denies stabilization resources such as housing, employment, and citizenry for women once released from prison, yet their emotional experiences are largely absent in analyses of this gendered violence. Drawing from a larger intimate ethnography project with a woman, LaTasha, recently released from a 25‐year to life prison sentence, this article examines how women negotiate and express emotions within the context of prison reentry contributing to feminist anthropological scholarship on state‐sanctioned gender violence. Through an in‐depth analysis of the challenges LaTasha faces in rebuilding relationships with family, navigating a system in which she has been outcasted, and asserting herself after being systematically disempowered, we gain insight into the ways in which carceral systems have prevented emotional complexity resulting in a form of incipient and largely invisible violence.

HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis Use among Men Experiencing Incarceration in the United States: A Prospective Cohort Study

Background: Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is an effective approach to preventing HIV acquisition and is recommended for populations overrepresented in carceral systems given the overlap with populations disproportionately impacted by HIV. However, few studies have focused on PrEP initiation outcomes in a carceral setting to maximize public health impact. Setting: This study was conducted in a unified jail/prison system within the state of Rhode Island located in the United States. Methods: A prospective observational cohort of men initiating PrEP within a jail setting were enrolled in this trial. Men were referred by providers, staff, or after self-presenting for HIV preventive care, these individuals were offered enrollment in the study which involved evaluation for clinical PrEP eligibility, PrEP initiation while incarcerated, continuation upon community re-entry and linkage to a community PrEP provider post-release. Results: A total of (N=100) men in the jail facility (e.g. “intake”) were enrolled in the cohort. Of the 100 men enrolled, 83% were determined to be PrEP eligible through standard clinical evaluation, 37% were prescribed PrEP, and 26% initiated PrEP while incarcerated. In total, 5% of enrolled individuals were linked successfully to PrEP care in the community. Conclusion: Our findings suggest preliminary feasibility and acceptability of initiating PrEP within a jail setting. There were significant challenges across the PrEP care continuum that can be used to inform future studies and practice.

Responding to and Dismantling Carceral Systems: Learning from Experiential Knowledge, Organizing and Community

Responding to and Dismantling Carceral Systems: Learning from Experiential Knowledge, Organizing and Community

Critical environmental justice and the Wasteocene: Oppression and resistance in an Italian prison during the Covid-19 pandemic

This article aims to frame the state violence and socio-ecological injustice perpetrated against prisoners through the lens of both critical environmental justice studies and the concept of the Wasteocene. We seek to uncover the socio-ecological relationships that have historically shaped the enforcement of the prison and waste systems through a focus on the Italian context during the Covid-19 pandemic. We explore the case of a jail in Campania, a region in the South of Italy infamous for its troubled waste management that has caused uncountable and entangled health, social, and economic harms. The jail is adjacent to an area with a long history of waste disposal practices and numerous legal conflicts and corruption scandals: all characteristics that make this case emblematic of the broader problem of carceral environmental injustice. We argue that carceral institutions are generative sites for examining the dynamics of violence, expendability, and wasting relationships that are built into their structures and core functions We also maintain that the Covid-19 pandemic has both uncovered and exacerbated such dynamics and therefore stands as a framing device that further corroborates our argument. We conclude with lessons and observations for scholars studying environmental concerns and carceral systems through a multidisciplinary lens.

Campus Sexual Violence and the Cost of Protecting Institutions: Carceral Systems and Trans Student Experience

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) students on university campuses experience high rates of sexual violence relative to their cisgender peers and are less likely to utilize campus resources. Despite this, TGD students’ voices are often left out of conversations about campus sexual violence. To learn about TGD students’ experiences of university sexual violence prevention and response infrastructure, we conducted focus groups with 21 TGD students at a large university in the northeastern United States. Informed by abolition feminism and critical trans politics, we undertook this thematic analysis to examine the limits of current systems to respond to TGD students’ needs and reduce their victimization. Our findings highlight how carceral logic contributes to TGD students’ exclusion from and distrust of university systems to address sexual violence. Further, our findings illustrate how TGD students’ visions for healing-oriented approaches to sexual violence on campuses align with transformative justice principles. These findings suggest that feminist social work must support the development of campus sexual violence prevention and response infrastructure that moves away from a reliance on carceral logic and toward approaches developed by community-led transformative justice organizations to inform inclusive, intersectional, campus sexual violence prevention and response efforts.

Archives, prisons and person-centred historical praxis: doing social history research on incarceration in colonial Africa

Bringing together methods and perspectives from critical archive studies, African history, social history and critical prison studies, this article considers the opportunities, challenges and ethical considerations that arise when doing social history research on colonial African prisons using official archives. We argue that while such records can provide valuable information, engagement with these documents needs to be grounded in recognition of their ‘person-ness’. This involves acknowledging the power dynamics and coercion that shaped the creation and content of official archives, prioritising the experiences of incarcerated people, and using the records in a way that recognises the limits of consent in terms of their origins and use. By turning to a person-centred historical praxis, researchers can not only play a key role in furthering our knowledge of colonial carceral systems but can also help to challenge these systems and their afterlives.

The Ameliorationist Trap: Reformist Capture and the Long Eighteenth Century

This essay advances ameliorationism as a keyword and diagnostic concept for reappraising eighteenth-century anti-slavery writing and political thought; it also considers the implications of eighteenth-century abolitionism for contemporary abolitionist theory and practice. I argue that Anglophone Atlantic writing on the transatlantic slave trade and colonial plantation slavery is overwhelmingly oriented by a reformist perspective that aims to soften, economize, and refine the practice of slave-based agricultural production in order to stave off demographic and environmental catastrophe. By way of a brief consideration of merchant and philosopher Thomas Tryon, I meditate on how this reformist line of thinking puts forward potent critiques of slavery that nonetheless reinscribe the plantation as a necessary form of social organization. This reformist trap confronts contemporary organizers and theorists of abolition, and scholars of the long eighteenth century might contribute to the struggle to abolish police forces and prisons by critically dismantling fictions about the recuperability of carceral systems.