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The Lemuel Shattuck Hospital Youth Service Program adopted a public health approach to address the mental health needs of incarcerated juvenile offenders in Massachusetts. The program, which operated for 6 years, provided psychiatric care and neuropsychological assessment to delinquent youth as well as training for psychiatry residents, neuropsychology fellows and Massachusetts Department of Youth Services’ staff. The program recognized and attempted to address the health care disparity of limited access to quality mental health services for incarcerated youth, particularly those from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds. The program was a collaborative venture among the Massachusetts Departments of Public Health and Youth Services, and Tufts-New England Medical Center. The scope of the problem of mental health care for incarcerated youth will be first outlined, followed by a history and evaluation of the program from a public health and system integration perspective.

Over 2 million individuals are incarcerated in the US criminal justice system. More than half of incarcerated Americans are also parents of minors. Parental incarceration can lead to a higher risk of mental illness and enduring trauma in children, as well as other problematic cognitive, developmental, and educational outcomes. Examining parental incarceration through a racial equity lens is critical, as people of color make up 67% of the incarcerated population despite making up only 37% of the US population. Further, gender-related equity issues pose important challenges for families with incarcerated parents. Here, we discuss prison-based psychosocial interventions designed both to build parenting skills and to improve parent well-being within a racial and gender equity lens. We hypothesize that effective services in these areas are essential components in a broad strategy designed to mitigate the potential negative effects suffered by families and children of incarcerated parents of color as a result of their imprisonment.

This study investigates the relationship between being formerly incarcerated and the sexual health of African American and White men. It uses data from the 2011–2013 National Survey of Family Growth to compare the likelihoods of reporting sexually transmitted disease among African American and White men who were formerly incarcerated with those who were never incarcerated. The results show that having been incarcerated increases the likelihood of having sexually transmitted infections (STIs) for both African American men and White men. The results also reveal that, when controlling for sociodemographic and sexual network differences, White men maintain lower infection rates than do comparable African American men regardless of their former incarceration statuses. When several factors are taken into account, the likelihood of infections for African American men who have never been incarcerated are higher than those of White men who have been incarcerated. Racial disadvantage is a key determinant of disparities in STIs between formerly incarcerated White males and never incarcerated African American males. The implications of these results are discussed.

Purpose – This chapter gives an overview of the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on institutional corrections in the United States and the responses correctional institutions have taken to lessen those impacts.

Methodology/Approach – A review of the extant literature was conducted to gather information on COVID-19 and the institutional corrections systems within the United States.

Findings – The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on correctional institutions within the United States were more pronounced due to the demographic characteristics of inmates and facility challenges. Responses to outbreaks or potential outbreaks in jails and prisons in the United States included screening measures, restricted inmate movement and visitation, and decarceration efforts.

Originality/Value – This chapter builds upon literature by discussing the challenges posed to correctional institutions in the United States in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and summarizing the measures taken to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on inmates, institutional staff, and community members alike.

The definition of the term “family” around the Western world is more heterogeneous than ever before and so are its roles and the social expectations of it. However, prisoners’ families (specifically parents and siblings) are expected to support their incarcerated son/brother as they are perceived responsible for his choices and as having the closest relationship with him. Based on a study of parents and siblings of incarcerated men in Israel, this chapter’s goal is to shed light on families’ choice to support their incarcerated son or brother and the struggles this choice entails. A thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 17 parents and 10 siblings of incarcerated men in Israel showed that nuclear family members may experience various struggles throughout the legal proceedings, including family hardships, negative social experiences, and negative experiences with formal institutions – all leading to social self-exclusion. Looking through the intersectionality lens, the findings show that when accumulating hardships that prisoners’ families experience encounter perceived harsh institutional systems of oppression, preordained marginalization can be deepened as families operate in opposition.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to highlight recent research addressing theories of female offending and the context of female perpetrated homicides. Women have often been omitted in research and theory development, thus gendered interventions and treatments lag behind. Additionally, female perpetrated homicides are rare, consequently research examining the context of the events and the events leading up to the homicide are inadequate.

Design/methodology/approach – The approach is to examine the historical research on female offenders, the context of female violent offenses particularly homicide offenses, and emerging theories of gendered experiences into criminal activities for women.

Findings – Findings indicate that gender matters when explaining theories of female offending and when examining the context of female perpetrated homicides.

Originality/value – Females have different life events from males, and these life events create distinct pathways into criminal offending, including the ultimate offense of homicide. Based on these differences, theory development as well as intervention and prevention strategies must be designed that are gender specific.

This review integrates and builds linkages among existing theoretical and empirical literature from across disciplines to further broaden our understanding of the relationship between inequality, imprisonment, and health for black men. The review examines the health impact of prisons through an ecological theoretical perspective to understand how factors at multiple levels of the social ecology interact with prisons to potentially contribute to deleterious health effects and the exacerbation of race/ethnic health disparities.

This review finds that there are documented health disparities between inmates and non-inmates, but the casual mechanisms explaining this relationship are not well-understood. Prisons may interact with other societal systems – such as the family (microsystem), education, and healthcare systems (meso/exosystems), and systems of racial oppression (macrosystem) – to influence individual and population health.

The review also finds that research needs to move the discussion of the race effects in health and crime/justice disparities beyond the mere documentation of such differences toward a better understanding of their causes and effects at the level of individuals, communities, and other social ecologies.

This chapter examines the barriers to reentry for justice involved young people in the US and Australia from the perspectives of the 44 Australian and 14 US stakeholders who work with them. The interviews were analyzed using inductive content analysis to identify key internal and external barriers. Results suggest a need for improvement in the areas of collaboration among systems, family engagement, and student self-determination. The discussion focuses on the similarities and differences in the barriers that exist across nations and systems. Implications for future research, practice, and policy are included to improve transition services and supports for juvenile justice involved youth.

This personal narrative describes the results of a tragic gun accident involving my young son and his close friend. In this autobiographical narrative, I trace the effects of youthful offender laws on my family and explain how our state's juvenile justice system transformed our family's lives for over three years. In addition, as both a participant and a sociologist observer, I show how race and class have conditioned the accident's outcome. As Griffith and Smith's (2005) work on mothering for schooling illustrates, social class greatly affects the relationship between school and family.

In our case, largely because of my training as a researcher and my husband's background in education and psychology, we were able to make the juvenile justice system work as positively as possible for our son. And, because of my privileged position as an academic, I am now able to make visible the effects of youthful offender laws on one youthful offender and his parents.

This chapter offers a prospective and naturalistic study of the impact of a risk-assessment and risk-management program on mentally abnormal young offenders admitted to a medium secure adolescent psychiatric inpatient unit in the United Kingdom (U.K.) because of violent, dangerous or self-harming behaviour. As a result of the risk assessment, there was a reduction in their violent, dangerous or self-harming behaviour that was significantly associated with a reduction in the number of risk factors. About 80% were discharged directly back into the community.