Incarceration and mortality in the United States.

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Criminology
• Sociology

Background:

• Overcrowded prisons are recognized as significant health risks, especially during pandemics like COVID-19.
• Limited research exists on the population-level health impacts of high incarceration rates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the causal relationship between penal expansion and mortality rates.
• To quantify the impact of incarceration on cause-specific and all-cause mortality.

Main Methods:

• Utilized county-level panel data from 2927 counties across 43 states (1983-2014).
• Employed a novel instrumental variable technique for causal inference.
• Corroborated findings using coarsened exact matching and simulation-based regression.

Main Results:

• Increased incarceration rates substantially elevate deaths from communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases (short-to-medium term).
• Non-communicable disease mortality and all-cause mortality are impacted in the short, medium, and long term.
• Geographically anchored mortality differences were predicted.

Conclusions:

• Penal expansion has significant, detrimental effects on population health.
• High incarceration rates contribute to increased mortality across various disease categories and overall.
• The findings underscore the need to consider the public health consequences of criminal justice policies.