The Prison Policy Initiative has compiled a webpage outlining key statistics and research about the relationship between mental health and the criminal justice system.
This brief summarizes research on the complex connections between criminal justice and health, with a focus on the impact of criminal justice involvement on health and well-being. The research evidence is clear that poor mental health and addiction are risk factors for criminal justice involvement and that incarceration is detrimental to health. Obstacles to health and well-being are particularly striking for those who are at highest risk of criminal justice involvement. While this study was conducted in Ohio, the policy recommendations are broadly applicable.
This hour-long panel discussion offers the opportunity to hear from experts as they discuss the various external factors that can play a role in adolescent brain development as well as services and organizations that can curb the effects of these factors.
This 2014 report from the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination highlights the racial discrimination, medical neglect, and human rights violations that are present within the LA County jail system. The study charts how people of color with mental health conditions are often routed into the criminal justice system, rather than being given access to community-based care.
In this qualitative analysis, the authors consider and compare conditions of combat to those of inner cities. Further, they discuss how the social, economic, and political ideologies which deny men of color's humanity and worth also deny the psychological injuries caused by constrained economic opportunity, inequality, and early childhood and adolescent neighborhood trauma.
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