Black men who were incarcerated between the ages of 15 and 22, and tracked for roughly 40 years ending in 2018, had a significantly lower life expectancy after their release from prison than non-Blacks, according to a recently released Boston Medical Center-based study.
Published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open, the study examined 7,794 non-Latinx and non-Black individuals listed in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Of those incarcerated and non-carcerated perons, 50% were male and 38% were Black. Though the study did not examine cause of death, it did conclude that incarceration raised risks of mortality 65% in Blacks. There was not a statistically significant increase in death risks among non-Black and non-Latinx people who’d been incarcerated, according to that team of researchers, which included clinicians from Boston University’s School of Medicine and School of Public Health and The Miriam Hospital in Providence, R.I.
Researchers for the National Institutes of Health- and Brown University-funded study said the birth years of their study participants prevented their findings from fully applying to incarcerated groups born later. Nevertheless, they wrote, their findings mean policies affecting disparities in health care and wellness must be considered alongside racial disparities in policing, courts and correctional institutions.
"Although reforms to criminal-legal systems themselves could help to mitigate the disparate consequences," those researchers wrote, "substantial progress may be elusive without simultaneous improvements in interrelated areas such as economic opportunity, residential segregation, and mental health care, among others. To the extent that the social determinants of crime are also determinants of poor health, public health proponents can highlight how decarceration and greater investment in communities need not come at the expense of public safety."