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Globally millions of children have a parent who is imprisoned. Research suggests that this has an adverse impact on the child and imprisonment of a parent is considered to be an adverse childhood experience (ACE). Parental incarceration will not only affect the child but the entire household and may result in further ACEs such as household dysfunction and parental separation making this group of children particularly vulnerable. This scoping review aims to adopt an international perspective to comprehensively examine the extent range and nature of literature both published and grey relating to parental incarceration and the potential impact on children’s emotional and mental health.

In this scoping review, the five stages identified by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) were used including identifying the research question, identifying relevant studies, study selection, charting data, collating, summarising and reporting results. In addition, the included studies were appraised for quality using methodology-specific tools. A critical narrative synthesis was adopted to present findings and discussion.

Nine studies met the inclusion criteria. Of the included studies, eight were retrieved from peer-reviewed journals and one from grey literature searching. Five categories with subcategories were identified affecting children’s mental health: 1) Relationships: parent and incarcerated child relationship; facilitators and barriers to maintaining contact; 2) Family structure; maternal or paternal incarceration; living arrangements during parental incarceration; 3) Children’s emotions: emotional recognition and regulation; resilience; 4) Prison stigma: social stigma; shame and secrecy; 5) Structural disadvantages: poverty; race/ethnicity.

This scoping review has highlighted how the imprisonment of a parent negatively affects their children’s emotional and mental health. Factors negatively impacting children’s emotional and mental health are interrelated and complex. Further research is required, including differences between paternal and maternal incarceration; impact of gender and age of child; poverty as an ACE and prison exacerbating this; and effects of ethnicity and race. An important policy direction is in developing an effective way of capturing the parental status of a prisoner to ensure that the child and family receive needed support.

Research about the prevalence of dementia among older adults in the incarceration system is currently lacking, and further investigation is warranted. Considering the high level of healthcare needs, unique behavioural issues and difficulty to rehabilitate within the system due to its punitive approach and lack of effective rehabilitation programs, further investigation is warranted to characterize and determine the number of incarcerated older adults with dementia. The purpose of this study is to estimate the prevalence of individuals with dementia in the prison system while also describing the incarceration, demographic and offence-related characteristics of this unique population.

South Carolina (SC) Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Registry (1992–2016) and South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) data (Fiscal years 1992–2019) were cross-referenced. The prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) cases in the corrections system was calculated using South Carolina Alzheimer's Disease (SC AD) SC ADRD Registry and SCDC data. Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated to determine strength and direction of relationships between year of incarceration and frequency of ADRD cases both prior to and after incarcerations, respectively. Significant differences by age group, race, gender and dementia type were determined using a two-tailed pooled t-test and Bonferroni approach where appropriate. Count data for types of crimes committed are also presented.

The linkage showed that there were 2,171 individuals within the SC AD Registry who have been in the corrections system, about 1% of those in the Registry. Of these individuals, 1,930 cases were diagnosed with ADRD after incarceration and 241 prior to incarceration. In 2016, 317 individuals with ADRD were incarcerated. For ages 55 and above in South Carolina, the prevalence of ADRD is 6.7% in the general, non-incarcerated population compared to 14.4% in the incarcerated population. Additional results showed that those diagnosed with ADRD between 55 and 65 years of age had a significantly lower mean age at first incarceration (34.6 years of age) than those diagnosed between 66 and 74 years of age (55.9 years of age), indicating that those incarcerated earlier in life had an earlier dementia diagnosis. Additionally, African Americans had a significantly lower mean age at first incarceration (43.4 years of age) than Whites (46.2 years of age) and females had significantly lower mean age at first incarceration (42.9 years of age) than males (45 years of age). When investigating trends, results showed a significant positive linear association between year and frequency of ADRD diagnoses (p-value < 0.05) for those with ADRD diagnosis prior to incarceration and a significant decreasing linear association (p-value < 0.0001) in the number of individuals with an ADRD diagnosis after corrections. Findings also showed that a large percentage of older adults with ADRD in prison did not commit a violence offence.

This study links a population-based Alzheimer’s disease registry and state-wide corrections data to estimate the prevalence of individuals with dementia in the prison system. This linkage presents an opportunity to fill in significant gaps and contribute to the body of literature on dementia among people in prison in the USA.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of short-term incarceration on antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence, virologic suppression, and engagement and retention in community care post-release.

A retrospective chart review of patients who attended the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) Outreach Clinic at a Canadian remand center between September 2007 and December 2011 was carried out. Data extraction included CD4 lymphocyte count, HIV viral load, ART prescription refills, and community engagement and retention during and one-year pre- and post-incarceration.

Outpatient engagement increased by 23 percent (p=0.01), as did ART adherence (55.2-70.7 percent, p=0.01), following incarceration. Retention into community care did not significantly improve following incarceration (22.4 percent pre-incarceration to 25.9 percent post-release, p=0.8). There was a trend toward improved virologic suppression (less than 40 copies/ml; 50-77.8 percent (p=0.08)) during incarceration and 70. 4 percent sustained this one-year post-incarceration (p=0.70).

The impact of short-term incarceration in a Canadian context of universal health coverage has not been previously reported and could have significant implications in optimizing HIV patient outcomes given the large number of HIV-positive patients cycling through short-term remand centers.

Although incarceration may have life-long negative health effects, little is known about associations between child incarceration and subsequent adult health outcomes. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors analyzed data from 14,689 adult participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to compare adult health outcomes among those first incarcerated between 7 and 13 years of age (child incarceration); first incarcerated at>or=14 years of age; and never incarcerated.

Compared to the other two groups, those with a history of child incarceration were disproportionately black or Hispanic, male, and from lower socio-economic strata. Additionally, individuals incarcerated as children had worse adult health outcomes, including general health, functional limitations (climbing stairs), depressive symptoms, and suicidality, than those first incarcerated at older ages or never incarcerated.

Despite the limitations of the secondary database analysis, these findings suggest that incarcerated children are an especially medically vulnerable population.

Programs and policies that address these medically vulnerable children’s health needs through comprehensive health and social services in place of, during, and/or after incarceration are needed.

Meeting these unmet health and social service needs offers an important opportunity to achieve necessary health care and justice reform for children.

No prior studies have examined the longitudinal relationship between child incarceration and adult health outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to assess how incarcerations persist across the world. The focus is on 163 countries for the period 2010-2015.

The empirical evidence is based on generalized method of moments. In order to increase room for policy implications, the data set is decomposed into sub-samples based on income levels, religious domination, openness to the sea, regional proximity and legal origins.

The following main findings are established. Incarcerations are more persistent in low income, Christian-protestant and Latin American countries while comparative evidence is not feasible on the basis of landlockedness and legal origins owing to unfavorable post-estimation diagnostic tests. Justifications for the comparative advantages and relevance of findings to theory building in public economics are discussed.

First, income levels matter in the persistence of incarcerations because low-income nations vis-à-vis their high-income counterparts have less financial resources with which to prevent and deal with events like terrorism, political instability and violence that lead to incarcerations. Second, the intuition for religious domination builds on the fact that liberal societies can be more associated with incarcerations compared to conservative societies. The main theoretical contribution of this study to the literature is that the authors have built on empirical validity to provide theoretical justification as to why categorizing countries on the basis of selected fundamental characteristics determine cross-country variations in incarcerations. Such evidence is important for theory building in public economics.

It is important for policy makers to understand the persistence of incarcerations across nations because resources could be allocated to regions and countries, contingent on the relative importance of future incarceration tendencies.

Several studies have reported the impact of paternal incarceration and criminal behavior on childhood delinquency; however, fewer studies have addressed the influence of maternal criminality on children’s behavioral outcomes. Integrating self-control and attachment theoretical frameworks, the purpose of this paper is to address the impact of mothers who have been stopped, arrested, convicted, and incarcerated in relation to their children’s delinquent behavior.

The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing data set was used to better understand this relationship. By using binary logistic regression, two types of delinquent behavior were assessed: destroying property and fighting.

The results revealed that mothers’ criminal behavior affected children’s fighting tendencies but did not significantly impact children’s tendency to destroy property. Furthermore, certain childhood antisocial traits and demographic characteristics revealed to also impact children’s delinquent behavior. From the results, implications and prevention strategies were drawn describing techniques to combat delinquency.

This research lays a foundation for future researchers to explore mother-child attachment and the transmission of low self-control from mother to child in relation to criminality. The current research is one of the first studies to specifically address how maternal criminal behavior affects their children’s tendency to engage in delinquency, specifically examining property destruction and fighting.

The purpose of this paper is to gain understanding about the effectiveness of a forensic peer support program’s impact on reducing criminal recidivism. People with histories of mental illness returning to the community following incarceration face tremendous challenges in jails and prisons and in successful reentry to community. Transitioning from jails and prisons is fraught with additional challenges such as reconnecting or connecting with mental health and substance abuse treatment, finding adequate housing, finding employment, reuniting with family and friends, etc. Unfortunately, recidivism remains high, principally because of these challenges. Many state and local authorities have supported the development of the forensic peer specialist.

Kaplan–Meier survival analyses were conducted to examine time to re-incarceration.

The population served was determined to be a particularly high risk of re-incarceration population, when released from prison. All had a mental illness diagnosis, with 80 percent diagnosed with at least one serious mental illness, and more than 50 percent had three or more anterior incarcerations. Utilizing Kaplan–Meyer survival analysis, the chance of re-incarceration for participants after one year was of 21.7 percent. Surprisingly, in the first year after release from prison, participants did much better than those in the general US prison population when in terms of re-incarceration rates (21.7 percent vs 43.4 percent).

While preliminary findings of this approach, this study reaffirms the idea that forensic peer support programs are beneficial in reducing recidivism rates for people diagnosed with a mental illness coming out of prison, offering individuals supports to maintain their lives in the community.

Very little is known about how weight gain during incarceration influences the health of people living in Canadian federal penitentiaries. To fill this knowledge gap, this study aims to determine how the observed weight gain influenced the development of obesity-related chronic diseases during incarceration.

This retrospective cohort study examined the association between weight gain and obesity-related chronic diseases for 1,420 participants incarcerated in federal penitentiaries in Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. To participate, individuals had to be incarcerated for at least six months at the time of the study (2016–2017). Current anthropometric data were measured or taken from medical records, then compared to anthropometric data at the beginning of incarceration (mean follow-up of 5.0 years) to determine weight change (kg) and body mass index change (kg/m²) during incarceration. Then, information about obesity-related chronic diseases was drawn from the participants’ medical records.

Chi-square and nonparametric median comparison tests were performed to detect statistically significant changes in anthropometric data, to determine if a relationship was present. This study observed a significant association between weight gain and disease development for many types of obesity-related chronic diseases (e.g. cancer, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia and sleep apnea). This confirmed an association between weight gain and chronic disease development in the prison population.

Participants who gained a significant amount of weight, during incarceration, were also more frequently diagnosed with obesity-related chronic diseases. These findings suggest that weight gain may contribute to the deterioration of peoples’ health during incarceration.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the social stigmatization of the formerly incarcerated identity and how this affects employment post-release. The authors consider the characteristics of this identity and the identity management strategies that individuals draw from as they navigate employment.

The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 men at various stages of release from federal institutions in Canada. Participants were actively searching for employment, intending to or would consider searching for employment, or had searched for employment in the past post-incarceration. Participant data were simultaneously collected, coded and analyzed using an inductive approach (Gioia et al., 2012).

Formerly incarcerated individuals have a unique awareness of the social stigmatization associated with their criminal record and incarceration history. They are tasked with an intentional choice to disclose or conceal that identity throughout the employment process. Six identity management strategies emerged from their accounts: conditional disclosure, deflection, identity substitution, defying expectations, withdrawal and avoidance strategies. More specifically, distinct implications of criminal record and incarceration history on disclosure decisions were evident. Based on participants’ accounts of their reintegration experiences, four aspects that may inform disclosure decisions include: opportune timing, interpersonal dynamics, criminal history and work ethic.

The authors explore the formerly incarcerated identity as a socially stigmatized identity and consider how individuals manage this identity within the employment context. The authors identify incarceration history and criminal record as having distinct impacts on experiences of stigma and identity management strategic choice, thus representing the experience of a “double stigma”.

Older adults who are or have been incarcerated constitute a growing population in the USA. The complex health needs of this group are often inadequately addressed during incarceration and equally so when transitioning back to the community. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the literature on challenges older adults (age 50 and over) face in maintaining health and accessing social services to support health after an incarceration and to outline recommendations to address the most urgent of these needs.

This study conducted a narrative literature review to identify the complex health conditions and health services needs of incarcerated older adults in the USA and outline three primary barriers they face in accessing health care and social services during reentry.

Challenges to healthy reentry of older adults include continuity of health care; housing availability; and access to health insurance, disability and other support. The authors recommend policy changes to improve uniformity of care, development of support networks and increased funding to ensure that older adults reentering communities have access to resources necessary to safeguard their health and safety.

This review presents a broad perspective of the current literature on barriers to healthy reentry for older adults in the USA and offers valuable system, program and policy recommendations to address those barriers.