Examining the Relationship Between Incarceration and Healthy Aging

Our understanding of the collateral consequences of incarceration on health, biological aging, and mortality has increased exponentially in recent years. Drawing on newly collected data on aging at age 62 and retrospective reports of incarceration history among a community cohort of Black men and women who have been prospectively followed from first grade (in 1966) to later life (modal age 62), this study adds to this growing literature by examining whether incarceration is associated with healthy aging, a concept that captures the aging experience through traditional indicators, such as physical and mental health conditions, as well as through indicators of functional ability and well-being, such as cognitive functioning, sleep, and hearing loss. By focusing on a first-grade, single-race cohort from the same socially-disadvantaged neighborhood, this study holds constant race, age, and early life context by design. Although largely a cross-sectional study, we also include key early life control variables in multivariable models. Results show that incarceration history is associated with less healthy aging compared to never being arrested using a global index and across many of the individual indicators. One unexpected finding is that many of these detriments are equally felt among the incarcerated and those with earlier stages of system contact (i.e., those arrested but not incarcerated). Taken together, these findings represent a first step in building scholarship on the association between criminal legal system contact and healthy aging, broadly defined, from a life course perspective and provide direction for future research in this emerging area.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40865-025-00286-5.