Prison punishes more
people than just the inmates
Wednesday, April 22,
2009
More people live behind bars in the United States than in any other
country, but the American prison system punishes more than just its
inmates---it also takes a toll on the health of friends and loved
ones left behind.
In the first known study of its kind, University of Michigan
researchers found that people with a family member or friend in
prison or jail suffer worse physical and mental health and more
stress and depressive symptoms than those without a loved one
behind bars. Moreover, these symptoms worsen the closer the
relationship to the person incarcerated.
The study results could help explain health disparities between
minorities and whites, says Daniel Kruger, research professor at
the U-M School of Public Health and lead researcher on the
study.
African Americans are more likely to know someone in prison and to
feel closer to the person incarcerated than whites do, Kruger
says.
"It's like a double whammy," he said.
Forty-nine percent of African Americans in the study report having
a friend or relative in prison during the past five years, compared
to just 20 percent of whites.
According to the study, those who knew someone in prison had 40
percent more days where poor physical health interfered with their
usual activities, including work, and 54 percent more days where
poor mental or emotional health interfered with these
activities.
Others have examined the health effects of incarceration on inmates
and a few studies have investigated the health of children whose
mothers are in prison, but those studies focused on people already
in the system, says Kruger.
"We actually took a representative sample of people in the
community and asked them whether they had a friend or relative
incarcerated in the last five years," Kruger said. "We also
included a powerful array of known health predictors as control
variables."
For instance, Kruger and colleagues considered whether a person
smoked tobacco, drank alcohol heavily, was overweight or obese, or
had adequate nutrition and physical exercise.
The study consisted of 1,288 adults from Flint, Mich., an urban
area with high unemployment and crime rates, and surrounding areas
of Genesee County. In the study, 67 percent of respondents were
white and 26 percent were African American.
"Our study demonstrates that incarceration is not only enormously
expensive economically, it also has public health costs and these
should be taken into consideration," Kruger said. "In the last 30
years or so, we have seen a more and more punitive system, one
where judges no longer have discretion for sentencing."
Moving toward a rehabilitation model may benefit both the offending
individuals and society, he says.
"The vast majority of people incarcerated are nonviolent drug
offenders," Kruger said. "We should shift oversight of substance
use and abuse to the health care sector."
One out of every 100 adults in the United States is incarcerated
and more than three times as many African Americans and Latinos
live in jails or prisons than college dorms, Kruger says. This
particular study looked only at African Americans, not Latinos,
because there is not a large population of Latinos in Flint and
Genesee County.
###
University of Michigan
Thanks to University of Michigan
for this article.