Mass Incarceration in the U.S.
Around the globe, every country has its superlatives. Some countries house the greatest winter athletes, the most technological innovation, the most sustainable infrastructure. One of many superlatives that the United States not-so proudly takes the cake on is mass incarceration. With the highest rate of incarceration in the world residing over 2 million people, the United States fuels its prison system with about $182 billion a year, wherein people of color are overrepresented by incarcerated populations compared to their white peers.
While many other aspects of the carceral system have been heavily discussed, the impact of health on inmates is often a factor that goes overlooked.
Health for the Incarcerated
Studies have shown that incarcerated individuals are far more likely to experience chronic conditions or suffer from infectious diseases. The most prominent example is COVID-19: during the pandemic, prison populations were estimated to be around five times more likely to become infected (and that statistic only includes those who were tested).
The rapid spread of COVID-19 in the carceral system and lack of quality treatment has also led to other unexpected effects.
During the pandemic, visits were suspended for over a year, leaving prisoners isolated from their families and loved ones. COVID-19 also caused prisons to reduce rehabilitation programs and recreation time, both of which affected the mental health of inmates. These pandemic restrictions have essentially been weaponized against prisoners, who are held to a higher standard than the general population.
While obviously, public health and mitigating the spread of the pandemic is of great importance, the disparate and lingering unequal harms of the pandemic on prisoners in the United States are simply unjust. Public health is also an issue of mental health, equitable treatment, and access to care. Without the option of critical rehabilitation, the carceral system only continues to fuel itself rather than affording inmates with a second chance.
Even after being released, those who are incarcerated face many structural challenges. Some research reports that individuals within two weeks of being released from incarceration are about 12.7 times more likely to die.
Why have these problems only snow-balled?
Well, a major contributing factor to the inequities of prison populations is a lack of real-time, reliable, and truly representative data. While this article has cited many statistics, these are often after-the-fact or not fully complete numbers that cannot comprehend the true scale of injustices within mass incarceration.
Even the 2 million prison population cited at the beginning of this article is a massive estimate based on decentralized data sets and many different reports. Additionally, the data on prison populations is often reported very late--studies in 2017 might not be released until 2021. Even measuring the success of vaccination of prisoners is nearly impossible without a centralized data collection system. Because the data is gathered so late, change is invariably slow.
What's Next?
Even with an incomplete picture, it's clear that the current carceral system exacerbates many problems of public health, especially in the case of the pandemic. Learning about these vast inequities is important because it gives us context for the health of populations that are often overlooked.
This work and investigation is inherently complicated. But complex work is often the most worthwhile and necessary.
While on the one hand, public health and pandemic precautions are extremely important, shouldn’t everyone face the same restrictions, regardless of criminal history? And how may we reconcile the fact that the poor treatment and increased risks of incarceration are burdens disproportionately carried by people of color, especially black men? Only understanding the conditions and constantly investigating the carceral system may bring about the kind of systemic reforms necessary to untangle this web.
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