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Time is a social construct often weaponized against marginalized people via waiting, imprisonment, and other forms of social control. In prisons, the length of one's sentence is something to be passed, overcome, or defeated. This paper seeks to understand how incarcerated women in jails—associated with awaiting sentencing or short sentences—experience time in the United States. Moreover, how do minoritized women experience and resist the time of imprisonment in such liminal spaces? I utilized participant observation, semi‐structured interviews, and visitations—in‐person and virtually—with women in a county jail. Their narratives elucidate that time was weaponized against them at three levels: (1) imprisonment itself, (2) through local and facility policies, and (3) via the manipulation of time by facility actors. Moreover, the women articulated how the weaponization of time was exacerbated for minoritized women and women who questioned their mistreatment. Finally, despite this weaponization, the women resisted the jail's temporal regime via intrapersonal tactics and interpersonal organizing. This was done in symbolic and meaningful ways tied to their intimate and embodied familiarity with jail time structures. They also resisted in substantive ways, alongside a community organization, which culminated in mutual aid programs, solidarity protests, and exposure of abuses in the jail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anticipatory stress—or worries about the future that produce emotional distress—may explain some of the deleterious repercussions of incarceration for health. We use nearly 500 interviews with incarcerated men and their family members to describe anticipatory stress stemming from the stressor of jail incarceration, a commonly experienced but understudied type of confinement distinct from prison incarceration. We identify and explain how jail incarceration involves a powerful confluence of factors that give rise to anticipatory stress about adjudication, family relationships, the well‐being of loved ones, and reintegration. We describe three types of anticipatory stress proliferation between incarcerated men and their families. First, anticipatory stress commonly proliferates from incarcerated men to their children's mothers and their own mothers, with anticipatory stress being particularly salient when it involves the possibility of major changes, system irrationality, and powerlessness. Second, family members can experience anticipatory stress regardless of whether their incarcerated loved one reports anticipatory stress, shaped in part by men's extensive criminal legal contact. Third, family members with weak relationships with incarcerated men generally do not experience anticipatory stress despite the anticipatory stress endured by their incarcerated loved ones. This study provides a framework for understanding how other stages of criminal legal contact contribute to health inequalities among incarcerated people and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research summary Policy implications In 2012, Chicago closed half of its public mental health clinics, which provide services to those in need regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay. Critics of the closures argued that they would result in service shortages and divert untreated patients to the criminal justice system. We explore this claim by examining whether and to what extent the closures increased criminal justice contact. Using a difference‐in‐differences framework, we compare arrests and mental health transports in block groups located within a half mile of clinics that closed to those equidistant from clinics that remained open. While we find evidence that police‐initiated mental health transports increased following the closures, we do not observe similar changes in arrests.Chicago's mental health clinic closures remain a contentious issue to this day. Our results suggest that the shuttered clinics were meeting a need that, when left unmet, created conditions for mental health emergencies. While the closures do not appear to have routed untreated patients to the county jail, they increased police contact and, subsequently, transportation to less specialized emergency care facilities. Our findings demonstrate the need to strengthen health care access, crisis prevention, and the mental health safety net to preclude police from acting as mental health responders of last resort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mixed methods study had two aims: (1) to examine the effectiveness of a jail diversion program in reducing recidivism and promoting educational and employment outcomes; and (2) to qualitatively explore mechanisms through which the program was effective. Participants were 17 individuals arrested for drug offenses who participated in an intensive, law enforcement‐based jail diversion program, and 17 individuals in a comparison group. Arrests were extracted from police records, and education and employment were extracted from program data. Four intervention participants completed qualitative interviews. Arrest rates in the intervention group decreased significantly postintervention, and arrest rates in the intervention group were numerically lower than those in the comparison group. Participants experienced significant increases in employment and driver's license status. Participants also identified mechanisms through which the program was effective. This jail diversion program shows promise in reducing recidivism and promoting adaptive functioning. Jail diversion programs that include mentorship, peer support, and removal of barriers to success may be particularly effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how death investigations in Los Angeles County jails disproportionately naturalize death among Black and Latino incarcerated people. Our study is based on an assessment of 58 autopsies, coroner investigator narratives, and toxicology reports produced between 2009 and 2018. We found that the Medical Examiner frequently arrived at natural or undetermined death determinations that minimized the culpability of carceral staff for loss of life that occurred within county jail. In our dataset, Black people were disproportionately classified as natural. Undetermined deaths were almost exclusively Latino. More than 75% of the cases in our study were deaths that occurred before standing trial. Our findings reveal how biomedical knowledge about incarcerated Black and Latino people is used to erase the life‐diminishing effects of punishment, neglect, and maltreatment that are central to the project of mass incarceration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"I Refuse for the Devil to Take My Soul: Inside Cook County Jail" is a book that provides insight into the experiences of incarcerated individuals at Cook County Jail in Chicago. The jail has a significant population of mentally ill inmates and has faced criticism for inadequate healthcare and safety concerns. The book features interviews and portraits of inmates and staff, aiming to give a voice to those impacted by the criminal justice system and promote a deeper understanding of their experiences. It explores the intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system, highlighting the overrepresentation of individuals with mental illness in American incarceration. The text also discusses the challenges faced by incarcerated individuals with mental illness, including longer periods of incarceration, abuse, and higher rates of recidivism. It emphasizes the need for policy changes to reduce incarceration levels and improve mental health care in jails and prisons. The article also discusses the importance of qualitative data and visual representations, such as photographs, in understanding the experiences of incarcerated individuals. It compares the book "I Refuse" to other works that have documented incarceration and emphasizes the social significance of jails and prisons beyond their role in disease transmission. [Extracted from the article]

Marshaling ethnographic data from a county jail, this study introduces "autonomy"—a novel concept and measurement of the degree to which an actor's exchange initiations are regulated by other exchange relations. This study rearticulates mutual dependence arguments about the social order of penological living in terms of social exchange theory and offers several innovations: 1) the structural forms of exchange relations in a penal housing unit stratify "carceral autonomy" across members of a social order; 2) diminished carceral autonomy contributes to the buildup of "exchange frustration"—the mixture of discontent and sadness experienced when goals cannot be achieved due the structure of an exchange network; 3) deprivations, inefficacies, and imported cultural standards contribute to what is exchanged and with whom in a penological setting; 4) caretaking in penological housing units is as much about maintaining social order through a form of generalized exchange as it is about network members helping each other; and 5) the emotional landscape of penological living can be mapped, in part, by examining the distribution of carceral autonomy and exchange frustration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jail incarceration substantially transforms romantic relationships, and incarceration may alter the commitment between partners, thereby undermining or strengthening relationships. In this article, we use in‐depth interviews with 85 women connected to incarcerated men (as current or former romantic partners) to explore how women articulate relationship changes that stem from their partner's jail incarceration, a common but understudied form of contact with the criminal legal system. We identify three interrelated and mutually reinforcing processes, which are shaped by and shape a partner's commitment to the relationship. First, incarceration produces liminality in the status of the relationship. Second, incarceration fosters women's sense of independence from their incarcerated partners. Third, incarceration creates space for partners to reevaluate how they prioritize the relationship in their lives. Jail incarceration intervenes in romantic relationships at different points during each relationship, and accordingly, women experience heterogeneity in processes of liminality, independence, and reprioritization. These processes contribute to differential relationship experiences, with some relationships deteriorating during incarceration, others strengthening, and others neither deteriorating nor strengthening. By systematically uncovering these processes linking jail incarceration to romantic relationships, we advance an understanding of how the criminal legal system can shape relationship commitment processes and inequalities among families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: This research asks whether jail‐based immigration enforcement leads to the profiling of Hispanics by municipal police. I leverage a natural experiment to examine the effects of 287(g) jail partnerships on traffic stops and arrests by municipal police in North Carolina in the late 2000s. I find that stops of Hispanic drivers fell in the wake of 287(g) agreements, and show that this fall was driven by changes in Hispanic road use. While I cannot unambiguously disentangle police and driver behavior, I find no evidence that municipal police officers increased pretextual stops and arrests of Hispanic drivers. Policy Implications: While there is existing evidence of racial profiling under 287(g) agreements by sheriff's deputies, this behavior does not appear to have extended to nonsignatory municipal police agencies. Despite this, the signing of 287(g) agreements appears to have prompted Hispanic outmigration and changes in driving behavior, adding to a growing body of evidence on the ripple effects of local‐federal immigration enforcement partnerships in Hispanic communities. This serves as a reminder that changes in demographic composition of the immigrant population may mediate the effects of immigration enforcement efforts on other outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass incarceration is an ethical crisis. Yet it is not only the magnitude of the system that is troubling. Mass incarceration has been created and sustained by racism, classism, and ableism, and the problems of the criminal legal system will not be solved without meaningfully intervening upon these forms of oppression. Beyond that, incarceration itself—whether of one person or 2 million—represents a moral failing. To punish and control, rather than invest in community and healing, is antithetical to the values of the field of bioethics. This commentary, which responds to the article "Fifty Years of U.S. Mass Incarceration and What It Means for Bioethics," by Sean Valles, considers abolition as a crucial form of justice that must be centered in the work of bioethics. Abolition is both an antiracist intervention and a means of considering the ways health care broadly and bioethics specifically have allowed for the perpetuation of carcerality in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The jail is everywhere" is an edited volume that explores the new geography of mass incarceration in the United States, focusing on the rapid growth of county jails, particularly in rural areas. The book features stories of resistance and organizing efforts against jail expansion in various states, highlighting the need for place-based abolitionist strategies rooted in solidarity. While the text is specific to the American context, it offers insights that may be relevant to Canadian organizers and researchers working on prison justice issues, particularly in understanding the impact of carceral humanism on rural communities. [Extracted from the article]

This study examined whether behavioral health service use post‐jail release was associated with reduced risk of jail reincarceration. The study sample included 20,615 individuals who had behavioral health diagnoses and were released from the Philadelphia County jail. Using administrative records of the county jail and state‐, county‐, and Medicaid‐funded behavioral health service use from 2010 to 2018, we conducted Cox proportional hazard analyses to estimate the association between behavioral health service use post‐jail release and the risk of return to jail within 3 years. Nearly 50% of the sample returned to jail within 3 years. Individuals who used behavioral health services were 26%–38% less likely to return to jail within 3 years than were individuals who did not. The study results suggest that connecting individuals with behavioral health services upon release from jail can reduce the risk of repeated jail incarceration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy PointsAs a consequence of mass incarceration and related social inequities in the United States, jails annually incarcerate millions of people who have profound and expensive health care needs.Resources allocated for jail health care are scarce, likely resulting in treatment delays, limited access to care, lower‐quality care, unnecessary use of emergency medical services (EMS) and emergency departments (EDs), and limited services to support continuity of care upon release.Potential policy solutions include alternative models for jail health care oversight and financing, and providing alternatives to incarceration, particularly for those with mental illness and substance use disorders. Context: Millions of people are incarcerated in US jails annually. These individuals commonly have ongoing medical needs, and most are released back to their communities within days or weeks. Jails are required to provide health care but have substantial discretion in how they provide care, and a thorough overview of jail health care is lacking. In response, we sought to generate a comprehensive description of jails' health care structures, resources, and delivery across the entire incarceration experience from jail entry to release. Methods: We conducted in‐depth interviews with jail personnel in five southeastern states from August 2018 to February 2019. We purposefully targeted recruitment from 34 jails reflecting a diversity of sizes, rurality, and locations, and we interviewed personnel most knowledgeable about health care delivery within each facility. We coded transcripts for salient themes and summarized content by and across participants. Domains included staffing, prebooking clearance, intake screening and care initiation, withdrawal management, history and physicals, sick calls, urgent care, external health care resources, and transitional care at release. Findings: Ninety percent of jails contracted with private companies to provide health care. We identified two broad staffing models and four variations of the medical intake process. Detention officers often had medical duties, and jails routinely used community resources (e.g., emergency departments) to fill gaps in on‐site care. Reentry transitional services were uncommon. Conclusions: Jails' strategies for delivering health care were often influenced by a scarcity of on‐site resources, particularly in the smaller facilities. Some strategies (e.g., officers performing medical duties) have not been well documented previously and raise immediate questions about safety and effectiveness, and broader questions about the adequacy of jail funding and impact of contracting with private health care companies. Beyond these findings, our description of jail health care newly provides researchers and policymakers a common foundation from which to understand and study the delivery of jail health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: The increase in immigration enforcement during the past two decades has led to a larger number of immigrants being detained in the U.S. criminal justice system. Using data from the 2006–2018 Annual Survey of Jails, we examine the impact of immigrants being held for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the conditions in U.S. jails. We find that increases in the number of detainees held for ICE are related to higher noncitizen jailed populations that are not offset by reductions in their citizen counterparts, likely contributing to worse confinement conditions. This is reflected in the higher levels of overcrowding and understaffing, as well as in the longer stays in jail and more physical assaults associated with a larger number of ICE detainees. These findings prove robust to using data on two local interior immigration enforcement programs responsible for the growing number of immigrant detainees in local jails—287(g) agreements and Secure Communities—as instruments to address the endogeneity of the number of ICE detainees with respect to jail conditions. The results are driven by slightly over half of U.S. counties located either along the United States–Mexico border or in states with a large or fast‐growing immigrant population. Policy Implications: As immigrant detention becomes more entrenched in the U.S. criminal justice system, understanding the connection between intensified immigration enforcement, immigrant detention, and the conditions of U.S. jails is well warranted. Our findings suggest that for jails already operating at or above capacity, immigrant detention may pose significant concerns for the safety and well‐being of all incarcerated individuals. Furthermore, our results have implications for the criminalization of unauthorized entry into the United States. Making immigration violations a criminal offense has resulted in the development of an inhumane immigration detention system motivated by profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: We explored the extent to which the implementation of a pretrial risk assessment instrument (PRAI) corresponded to changes in the pretrial processing of defendants using multiple administrative data sources from a large county in the southeastern United States. Our findings revealed little evidence of reductions in detention lengths or increases in the use of nonfinancial forms of release following the tool's adoption. This was largely attributable to the exercise of judicial discretion, as judges frequently departed from the tool's recommendation using alternatives that were more punitive and often included financial conditions—particularly for Black and Latino defendants. Furthermore, the exercise of discretion was linked to increased rates of pretrial failure. Policy Implications: PRAIs were adopted on a massive scale with the understanding that they are evidence‐based and geared toward efficiently and equitably reducing pretrial populations; however, we are lacking the evaluative work to determine their impacts. Our findings suggest that PRAIs may not only undermine reform efforts, but may worsen disparities, if communities fail to complete the up‐front work of discussing their expectations for pretrial decision making, including the conditions under which financial constraints may be justifiable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: As incarcerated populations report significantly higher prevalence rates for psychological distress than community populations, it is important to have an evidence‐based perspective on what reduces psychological distress among people in prison or jail. Aims: To examine effects of mindfulness‐based interventions (MBIs) on psychological distress, including anxiety, depressive symptoms, stress and overall psychological distress, and on mindfulness in incarcerated populations. Methods: This systematic review and meta‐analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) involved a comprehensive search within the PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and SCOPUS databases to identify relevant RCTs. The quality of the included RCTs was assessed using the Cochrane Collaboration risk of bias tool. Depending on I2 statistic values for heterogeneity, either a random effects model or fixed effects model was used. Subgroup analyses for each outcome were conducted to see whether effects differed when compared MBIs to active control groups, provided with other comparable interventions, or passive control groups, provided with no intervention (i.e., treatment as usual [TAU] control groups or waiting list controls). Results: Thirteen RCTs met the eligibility criteria. Meta‐analyses showed moderate effects of MBIs on depressive symptoms and overall psychological distress, large effects on stress, and small effects on anxiety and mindfulness. The overall risk of bias across studies was unclear. Fewer studies were conducted to compare effects of MBIs to other interventions than TAU. Conclusions: Future high‐quality studies comparing MBIs to other active interventions are needed to understand better whether the former are comparable or superior to other evidence‐based treatments in decreasing distress and improving mindfulness in incarcerated populations and/or in which circumstances one may be preferable to the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Individuals who are incarcerated in the United States often struggle to access family planning care because of the common practice of jails not providing contraceptives on site. However, less is known about the contraceptive needs and preferences, including the desirability of intrauterine devices and implants, among those who are incarcerated. Methods: Cross‐sectional, in‐person surveys were administered to 148 reproductive‐age women (aged 18‐48) incarcerated at an urban jail in Utah to identify women's contraceptive needs and preferences while incarcerated. We used summary statistics and logistic regression to investigate relationships between demographic characteristics, the desire to access contraceptive services while incarcerated, and interest in specific contraceptive methods. Results: Surveys indicate a high interest in accessing contraceptives while in jail (73%). Participants who were more likely to prefer access to contraceptive services in jail were also more likely to be interested in the injectable (odds ratio [OR], 4.75; 95% CI, 1.03‐21.94), the implant (OR, 8.44; 95% CI, 1.70‐41.99), and intrauterine devices (OR, 10.04; 95% CI, 3.46‐29.20) than participants indicating no desire to access contraceptive services while in jail. Discussion: Jails could be an access point for contraceptive methods requiring health care provider intervention in the state of Utah. However, care must be taken due to broader historical legacies of reproductive coercion in carceral settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To formalize comparative interrupted time series (CITS) using the potential outcomes framework; compare two version of CITS--a standard linear version and one that adds postperiod group-by-time parameters--to two versions of difference-in-differences (DID)--a standard version with time fixed effects and one that adds group-specific pretrends; and reanalyze three previously published papers using these models. Data Sources: Outcome data for reanalyses come from two counties' jail booking and release data, Medicaid prescription drug rebate data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and acute hepatitis C incidence from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Study Design: DID and CITS were compared using potential outcomes, and reanalyses were conducted using the four described pre--post study designs. Data Collection/Extraction Methods: Data from county jails were provided by sheriffs. Data from CMS are publicly available. Data for the third reanalysis were provided by the authors of the original study. Principal Findings: Though written differently and preferred by different research communities, the general version of CITS and DID with group-specific pretrends are the same: they yield the same counterfactuals and identify the same treatment effects. In a reanalysis with evidence of divergent preperiod trends, failing to account for this in standard DID led to an 84% smaller effect estimate than the more flexible models. In a second reanalysis with evidence of nonlinear outcome trends, failing to account for this in linear CITS led to a 28% smaller effect estimate than the more flexible models. Conclusion: We recommend detailing a causal model for treatment selection and outcome generation and the required counterfactuals before choosing an analytical approach. The more flexible versions of DID and CITS can accommodate features often found in real data, namely, nonlinearities and divergent preperiod outcome trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overrepresentation of individuals with mental illness in the criminal/legal system is well documented. While professional associations urge diversion towards treatment, little is known about the practices these institutions use to identify this population. One understudied space in the criminal/legal continuum is jails. This exploratory study compares two types of mental health identification at jail booking to assess jail‐ and community‐based service outcomes by identification type (N = 2956): (a) staff observation and (b) a standardized screening instrument. Individuals identified through staff observation were significantly more likely to receive jail‐ and community‐based services, even though current symptomology and substance misuse were both significantly higher for individuals identified only by the screening instrument. These findings point to the importance of jails in providing stabilizing services during incarceration, but further, show the impact that identification practices have on individuals as they transition to the community. Community context showed varied rates of jail staff observations of mental illness, showing greater risks for individuals in rural communities. Implications include a need for system‐level changes by instituting evidence‐based identification practices in jails, and improving professional collaboration practices between mental health and criminal/legal practitioners as individuals enter and exit jails. Highlights: This study compares the mental health identification practices‐as‐usual (i.e. staff observation) of eight jails to an objective screening instrument, and assesses the jail‐ and community‐based service outcomes resulting from these methods.Individuals identified by staff observation were significantly more likely to receive jail‐ and community‐based services, even though those identified by only the screening instrument had significantly greater behavioral health risks.Rural jails were significantly less likely to identify individuals through staff observation, yet had higher proportions identified by the screening instrument.Mental health practices of jails can have enduring treatment effects that follow individuals as they return to the community. Staff training combined with a screening instrument is recommended for identification, as well as strong community‐based collaborations for uninterrupted care upon reentry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I ask how might environmental justice studies scholarship be recast if we consider the phenomenon of environmental injustice as a form of criminalisation? In other words, since environmental injustice is frequently a product of state‐sanctioned violence against communities of colour, then what are the implications of reframing it as a practice of treating those populations as criminally suspect and as deserving of state punishment? Moreover, how are the targets and survivors of environmental injustice/racism enlisted in generative ways that resist that criminalisation and support abolition? I answer these questions through a consideration of how struggles inside and outside of carceral spaces represent urgent and timely opportunities to rethink the possibilities of environmental justice theory and politics by linking them to practices and visions of abolition ecology and critical environmental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims: The established standard care in pregnancy is medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD); however, many institutions of incarceration do not have MOUD available. We aimed to describe the number of incarcerated pregnant women with opioid use disorder (OUD) in the United States and jails' and prisons' MOUD in pregnancy policies. Design Epidemiological surveillance study of 6 months of outcomes of pregnant, incarcerated women with OUD and cross‐sectional survey of institutional policies. Setting: United States. Participants: Twenty‐two state prison systems and six county jails. Measurements The number of pregnant women with OUD admitted and treated with methadone, buprenorphine or withdrawal; policies on provision of MOUD and withdrawal in pregnancy. Findings Twenty‐six per cent of pregnant women admitted to prisons and 14% to jails had OUD. One‐third were managed through withdrawal. The majority who were prescribed MOUD were on methadone (78%, prisons; 81%, jails), not buprenorphine. While most sites (n = 18 prisons, n = four jails) continued pre‐incarceration MOUD in pregnancy, very few initiated in custody (n = four prisons; n = two jails). Two‐thirds of prisons and three‐quarters of jails providing MOUD in pregnancy discontinued it postpartum. Conclusions: In this sample of US prisons and jails, one‐third required pregnant women with opioid use disorder to go through withdrawal, contrary to medical guidelines. More women were prescribed methadone than buprenorphine, despite the fewer regulatory barriers on prescribing buprenorphine. Most sites stopped medication for opioid use disorder postpartum, signaling prioritization of the fetus, not the mother. Pregnant incarcerated women with opioid use disorder in the United States frequently appear to be denied essential medications and receive substandard medical care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that history can play a role in addressing present‐day concerns about the form and function of incarceration in the post‐colonial nation of Guyana. It analyses some of the key features of imprisonment during the British colonial period (1814–1966), and connects them to the challenges faced by the prisons sector since Independence in 1966. The authors suggest that an appreciation of the history of jails in Guyana – including issues connected with prison capacity, overcrowding, training and education, and rehabilitation – can play a role in inspiring and supporting change in the Guyana Prison Service. In this way, the article suggests, historical research can impact on the administration of criminal justice in Guyana – and potentially in other contemporary post‐colonial contexts, both within, and beyond, the Caribbean region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rikers Island is the main jail complex for New York City. At its height in the 1990s, 22,000 people were incarcerated there. Having attracted national and international condemnation, it is regarded as one of the city's biggest failures: a magnet for scandal and controversy. In 2017, Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged that the complex would be closed within ten years with smaller 'state of the art' jails built to replace it. Our research explores the social history of Rikers from its origins to the present day, in a bid to provide a more nuanced understanding of the island and incarceration in New York City, and to engage with ongoing debate on the future of penal reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding trends in substance use by gender among jail‐based treatment program participants can inform policies and programs tailored to this population. Preprogram assessment data from 3509 individuals entering a jail‐based substance use disorder treatment program in Missouri between 1998 and 2016 were analyzed. Primary outcome was program participants' strongly preferred substances. Demographic covariates and drug preferences were compared between males and females. Average yearly trends in preferred substances were calculated. While 25.8% of the sample preferred heroin, it was more strongly preferred by women (36.4%) than men (22.0%, p < 0.0001). Alcohol and marijuana were preferred more by males. Overall, preferences for heroin and methamphetamine increased over time while alcohol, marijuana, and other stimulants decreased. Women being more likely to prefer heroin and the increasing preference for heroin over time are consistent with national trends. Offering evidence‐based treatment like pharmacotherapy and gender‐sensitive approaches can help address the needs of this vulnerable population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This guide accompanies the following article: Ingel S., Richards-Karamarkovich A., Bietsch S., Rudes D. S. Privacy violations and procedural justice in the United States prisons and jails. Explain (1) the rationale - real or theorized - behind this policy, (2) how the policy might benefit prison staff, (3) how the policy might benefit residents, and (4) the potential negative consequences/effects of the policy on residents. Cross-gender supervision is a tricky subject as courts and prison/jail administrators have to balance privacy rights of incarcerated individuals, occupational rights of officers, and security concerns of the institution. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the authors' views about efforts to downsize the prison and jail populations in America as of 2018, and it mentions a decades-long decline in felony crimes in the country, as well as the lack of a relationship between crime and incarceration in the U.S. Criminal justice-related policy changes are examined, along with mandatory minimum sentences, criminal justice policy reform in California, and a cost-effective crime prevention plan.

Research Summary: Our study represents the first effort to evaluate systematically Proposition 47's (Prop 47's) impact on California's crime rates. With a state‐level panel containing violent and property offenses from 1970 through 2015, we employ a synthetic control group design to approximate California's crime rates had Prop 47 not been enacted. Our findings suggest that Prop 47 had no effect on homicide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, or burglary. Larceny and motor vehicle thefts, however, seem to have increased moderately after Prop 47, but these results were both sensitive to alternative specifications of our synthetic control group and small enough that placebo testing cannot rule out spuriousness. Policy Implications: As the United States engages in renewed debates regarding the scale and cost of its incarcerated population, California stands at the forefront of criminal justice reform. Although California reduced its prison population by 13,000 through Prop 47, critics argue anecdotally that the measure is responsible for recent crime upticks across the state. We find little empirical support for these claims. Thus, our findings suggest that California can downsize its prisons and jails without compromising public safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Community re-entry from custody programmes facilitate access to community resources, such as cash assistance and food stamps, with the aim of reducing criminal recidivism. Evidence that these programmes achieve is mainly from longer-term prisoners rather than short-term jail inmates.Aim: The aim of the study is to test the hypothesis that facilitating access to community resources while still in jail would reduce re-arrest rates among former jail inmates in the USA.Methods: Community resources offered to the jail inmates participating in this study included Medicaid, food stamps and cash assistance. Participants who opted to sign up for these social services were matched with non-applicants based on date of release (n = 101). Each participant's criminal history was coded prior to release from the jail and at three months, six months and one year after release.Results: Contrary to our original hypotheses, recidivism was not significantly reduced in the applicant group. People released after facilitated access to community assistance had an increase in drug offence severity at six months after release. Recidivism also differed by age and race.Conclusion: The substance offences in the applicant group suggested that cash benefits provided the released offender with the means to sustain their substance misuse. Treatment for substance misuse should be incorporated with other resources in order to reduce recidivism effectively. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appropriation of 'welfare stigma' or stereotypes about poor people's overreliance and abuse of public aid in two core criminal justice functions is examined: felony adjudication in a court system and space allocation in a jail. Through a comparative ethnographic study in which an abductive analysis of data (20 months of fieldwork) was used, we show that criminal justice gatekeepers utilize welfare stigma to create stricter eligibility criteria for due process in criminal courts and occupancy in jails. Specifically, the number of court appearances, motions, trials, jail beds, food, showers, and medical services is considered by professionals to be the benefits that individuals seek to access and abuse. Professionals view their role as preventing (rather than granting) access to these resources. The comparative nature of our data reveals that welfare stigma has interorganizational utility by serving two different organizational goals: It streamlines convictions in courts, which pulls defendants through adjudication, and conversely, it expands early release from jails, which pulls inmates out of the custody population. In the context of diminishing social safety nets, our findings have implications for understanding how discretion is exercised in an American criminal justice system increasingly tasked with the distribution of social services to the urban poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Given a lack of interventions to identify and engage individuals with early psychosis in jail and connect them to specialty care in the community upon release, we designed a Targeted Educational Campaign (TEC) for correction officers working in jails. We report on impacts of the TEC on officers' cognitive and attitudinal outcomes., Methods: Three different cohorts of officers-totaling n = 451-took part in a survey: 200 at baseline before the TEC began, 123 at 6-months into the TEC, and 128 at 12-months into the TEC. Among each cohort of officers, four constructs were measured: (1) knowledge about early psychosis; (2) self-efficacy around detecting early psychosis and referring to mental health services within the jail; (3) expectations about the benefits of detection and referral to specialty care; and (4) social distance stigma toward detainees with early psychosis., Results: While exposure to TEC elements was as-planned in the first 6-months, exposure diminished substantially at 12-months, coinciding with increasing fatigue among correction officers due to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as serious staffing shortages. Knowledge, behavioural expectations, and self-efficacy scores improved from baseline to 6-months, with greater exposure to roll-call messages driving scores. Knowledge and behavioural expectations at 12-months were associated with having received an information post card. Social distance stigma worsened across timepoints., Conclusions: An educational campaign for jail staff can enhance knowledge, self-efficacy, and behavioural expectations regarding early psychosis, though only while the campaign elements are active. Further research should investigate whether or not social distance stigma or other types of stigma increase alongside improvements., (© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Background and Aims: Opioid overdose is a leading cause of death during the immediate time after release from jail or prison. Most jails in the United States do not provide methadone and buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder (MOUD), and research in estimating its impact in jail settings is limited. We aimed to test the hypothesis that in-jail MOUD is associated with lower overdose mortality risk post-release., Design, Setting and Participants: Retrospective, observational cohort study of 15 797 adults with opioid use disorder who were released from New York City jails to the community in 2011-2017. They experienced 31 382 incarcerations and were followed up to 1 year., Measurements: The primary outcomes were death caused by accidental drug poisoning and all-cause death. The exposure was receipt of MOUD (17 119 events) versus out-of-treatment (14 263 events) during the last 3 days before community re-entry. Covariates included demographic, clinical, behavioral, housing, health-care utilization and legal characteristics variables. We performed a multivariable, mixed-effect Cox regression analysis to test association between in-jail MOUD and deaths., Findings: The majority were male (82%) and their average age was 42 years. Receiving MOUD was associated with misdemeanor charges, being female, injection drug use and homelessness. During 1 year post-release, 111 overdose deaths occurred and crude death rates were 0.49 and 0.83 per 100 person-years for in-jail MOUD and out-of-treatment groups, respectively. Accounting for confounding and random effects, in-jail MOUD was associated with lower overdose mortality risk [adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) = 0.20, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.08-0.46] and all-cause mortality risk (aHR = 0.22, 95% CI = 0.11-0.42) for the first month post-release., Conclusions: Methadone and buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder during incarceration was associated with an 80% reduction in overdose mortality risk for the first month post-release., (© 2022 Society for the Study of Addiction.)

Inmates represent a vulnerable population with increased rates of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder ( PTSD). However, little is known about the rates of trauma and PTSD among male inmates with acute psychiatric illness. This prospective, randomized study was conducted to assess the current rates of trauma and PTSD in this population. The sample consisted of 48 patients admitted to a hospital jail psychiatry service in New York City. Subjects were administered the Life Stressor Checklist-Revised and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM- IV- TR Disorders, PTSD Module ( SCID-I). The rate of PTSD diagnosis via SCID-I was 46.2% as compared to 2.1% diagnosis via clinical interview. All participants reported a history of at least one stressful and/or traumatic event, and many of these events occurred during incarceration. These results demonstrate that a great deal of trauma and PTSD goes unrecognized and untreated in this population, indicating the need for more effective treatment interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two other Bouteflika-era ministers had jail terms on corruption allegations upheld on appeal on June 28th: Djamel Ould Abbes for six years and Said Berkat for four, the news agency said. B More high profile Bouteflika era figures are called to account. b An Algerian appeals court on June 28th upheld a 20-year prison sentence for corruption against Chakib Khelil, who held the energy portfolio for a decade, the I APS i news agency reported. The court also fined him Dinars 2m (about $13,600) and upheld prison sentences of five and six years respectively against Mohamed Meziane, ex-head of state oil and gas giant Sonatrach, and his deputy Abdelhafidh Feghouli. [Extracted from the article]

The court in Ziguinchor, the main city in Casamance, handed down six-month suspended sentences to two other defendants and acquitted 11 others. Casamance, Senegal's southernmost region, is almost separated from the rest of the country by the tiny state of B The Gambia b . The Senegalese government said on June 10th it had arrested members of a rebel group campaigning for the independence of the southern Casamance region, a claim refuted by a leading opposition figure as tensions heat up before an upcoming vote I (See p. 23627B) i . [Extracted from the article]

This essay sees Matthew 25:31-46 as Jesus' offer of both gift and challenge: disciples will simultaneously minister to and be ministered to by Jesus in jail and prison. Following a consideration of two different dominant ways of interpreting the passage in the literature-what are sometimes called the missionary and the social justice interpretations-and Luther's reading of the passage as falling under the Fifth Commandment, the essay invites the reader to engage the transformative consequences of 'seeing' Jesus imprisoned in the U.S. criminal 'justice' system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional wisdom is that offenders have very high discount rates not only with respect to income and fines but also with respect to time incarcerated. These rates are difficult to measure objectively and the usual approach is to ask subjects hypothetical questions and infer time preference from their answers. In this article, we propose estimating rates at which offenders discount time incarcerated by specifying their equilibrium plea, defined as the discount rate, which equates the time and expected time spent in jail following a guilty plea and a trial. Offenders are assumed to exhibit positive time preference and discount time spent in jail at a constant rate. Our choice of sample is interesting because the offenders are not on bail, punishment is not delayed and the offences are planned therefore conforming to Becker's model of the decision to commit a crime. Contrary to the discussion in the literature, we do not find evidence of consistently high time discount rates, and therefore cannot unequivocally infer that the prison experience always results in low levels of specific deterrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article performs a cost-benefit analysis to determine socially optimal bail levels for felony defendants. We consider jailing costs, the cost of lost freedom to incarcerated defendants, and the social costs of flight and new crimes committed by released defendants. We estimate the effects of changing bail using data from a randomized experiment. We find that the typical defendant in our sample would be willing to pay roughly $1,000 for 90 d of freedom. While imprecise, our optimal bail estimates are similar to the observed levels of bail prior to bail reform. ( JEL J17, J19, K14, K42) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of participants in a US drug treatment court describes the relationship between the imposition of short-term jail sanctions and substance abuse treatment dropout, and examines offender characteristics moderating or modifying the impact of jail sanctions on treatment dropout. Data were derived from administrative information collected by the Dane County Wisconsin Drug Treatment Court from 1996-2004 on all 573 participants achieving a final disposition of treatment completion or failure during those program years. Iterative Cox proportional hazards models of time to treatment failure were created; jail sanctions during drug court participation were framed as time-dependent covariates. A theoretical framework and specific statistical criteria guided construction of a final parsimonious model of time to treatment drop-out. Treatment failure was associated with unemployment [hazard ratio (HR) in unemployed versus employed = 1.41, P-value 0.0079], lower educational attainment (HR in high school non-graduate versus graduate = 1.41, P = 0.02) and application of the first jail sanction (HR 2.71, P < 0.001). The association between treatment failure and a first sanction was considerably stronger for sanctions administered earlier in participation (HR for sanction 1 at <30 days 11.34, P-value 0.0002). An initial jail sanction for non-adherence may be more likely to foster treatment compliance in less refractory individuals (i.e. those not already acclimated or socialized to incarceration or other corrections interventions). More stringent supervisory conditions and individualized services may be required to reintegrate such offenders and promote longer-term public safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) requires states begin termination proceedings when a child resides in foster care for fifteen out of the last twenty-two months. Many states interpret this to mean that an incarcerated parent is unfit when they leave their child in foster care just because they are separated from their children. Parents and children can still have meaningful relationships even when separated. Thus, parental unfitness should depend on many factors such as the relationship with the child, age of the child, and ability to provide support for the child—not just the time spent away from the child. This Note advocates for the amendment of ASFA to include factors courts should consider when terminating the parental rights of incarcerated parents and encouraged states to focus not on a time frame for termination, but rather consideration of circumstances relevant to each individual family. States should incorporate the factors into their state laws. Further, states should actively work with prisoners and their children to help maintain contact and if possible, reunify families after incarcerations. These services will help prevent the need for termination after a parent completes their sentence and will help to reduce recidivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

: In our nation today, the number of prisons and prisoners continue to grow at rates that are out-of-control. One in 100 of our citizens is in jail or prison, the highest ratio in the world. Unlike the poor, homeless, critically ill, and elderly, those in prison are separated from us to the degree they are unseen. Unseen also, is the oppressiveness of the criminal justice system that oversees more than 6.5 million people either in confinement or on probation or parole. Liberation theology, which advocates and works toward freeing people from oppression, includes feminist, black, womanist and Latino/Hispanic movements. This article proposes prison theology as part of the liberation theology family and identifies a prison theology based on liberation, hope and justice. It encourages a prison theology movement led by the church to liberate those under the oppressiveness of the criminal justice system, especially those confined and to energize a passion for justice and compassion for the oppressed throughout the criminal justice system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anyone with even a cursory interest in the prison system of the Republic of Ireland will be struck by how quickly one arrives at the frontiers of knowledge. Getting the measure of penal policy issues is not so much a question of weighing up competing claims for understanding and sifting the accumulated evidence, as attempting to paint a crude, and hopefully not too distorted, picture of a landscape that is mostly in shadows. Where there is a measure of illumination it is often dim. Notwithstanding the lack of baseline information, the government has embarked on a programme of prison expansion. Interestingly, while the total number behind bars has grown, the population of sentenced prisoners has changed little, a fact that has gone largely unnoticed despite its implications for penal planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: The study compared the recidivism of 517 deportable and 780 nondeportable aliens released from the Los Angeles County Jail over a 30-day period in 2002. The results of our analyses revealed no difference in the rearrest rate of deportable and nondeportable aliens in terms of its occurrence, frequency, or timing. Policy Implications: The results lend no support to the ubiquitous assertion that deportable aliens are a unique threat to public safety. These findings undermine one common justification offered for the current crackdown on deport-able aliens within the country. More research is needed to determine whether these results can be replicated generally and with subtypes of deportable aliens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter describes the experience of an auditor's office in providing practical solutions to a long-term problem involving county jails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]