Advancing evidence-based interventions at the intersection of criminal justice and health

• Published date: 11 September 2017
• Pages: 137-138
• Date: 11 September 2017
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPH-05-2017-0023
• Author: Cyrus Ahalt,Brie Williams
• Subject Matter: Health & social care,Criminology & forensic psychology,Prisoner health,Sociology,Sociology of crime & law,Public policy & environmental management,Policing,Criminal justice

Cyrus Ahalt and Brie Williams

Advancing evidence-based interventions at the intersection of criminal justice

and health

Disproportionate mental illness, substance use disorders, and infectious diseases have long

demanded the attentions of correctional health providers, prison administrators, and criminal

justice policymakers around the world. But as criminal justice reform accelerates, there is a

growing acknowledgment that criminal justice involvement has relevance to nearly every facet of

individual and public health and that a consideration of health and health-related factors belongs

at the core of nearly every criminal justice intervention.

Examples of the close connection between health and criminal justice involvement and

outcomes are plentiful. Chronic illness and disability, which are affected by the conditions and

stress of incarceration, also pose challenges to the successful community reintegration.

Women’s health can suffer in correctional environments that have not incorporated a differential

gender-focused approach to account for their different healthcare priorities, just as interventions

designed to divert women into treatment-based alternatives to incarceration risk failure if they do

not adequately account for those same needs. Increasing rates of advanced age and serious

illness in correctional populations have implications both for the human rights and dignity of

individuals who will die in custody and for the need to develop tools to identify individuals who are

appropriate for the early release to die in the community. More broadly, many have argued that

the availability of necessary, quality healthcare to criminal justice-populations (such as behavioral

and mental health treatment for substance use disorders or serious mental illness) is essential to

producing the outcomes that the criminal justice systems aim to achieve (such as enhanced

neighborhood safety and lower rates of crime). It is also an ethical imperative; that prisoners

deserve the same standard of care as they would receive in the community is the first of the

United Nations’Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners and a constitutional guarantee in

the US system.

In this context of slowly converging criminal justice and public health systems, there is a growing

demand for evidence-based interventions that translate research into action to advance both

health and rehabilitation for those in the criminal justice system. Accordingly, many longstanding

criminal justice institutions and interventions are evolving to incorporate health, as in the

emergence of specialty drug and behavioral health courts and the creation of treatment-based

alternatives to solitary confinement for those with mental illness or exhibiting mental health

symptoms. Similarly, some health interventions are themselves being adapted to meet the needs

of the criminal justice population, as in the cases of patient navigation to aid the reentry of people

living with HIV from jail to the community and the growing number of prison-based hospice

units. As research and program evaluation efforts continue to show the effectiveness of such

“health-first”criminal justice interventions, opportunities for innovation in programming and policy

at the intersection of criminal justice and health will only multiply.

This special issue of the International Journal of Prisoner Health focuses on the drive for

programming and policy innovation in criminal justice health by drawing attention to the

examples of success and areas of opportunity. This special issue explores real and proposed

interventions that build on some of the evidence base we featured in our special issue of earlier

this year, which focused on the current state of knowledge in key areas of correctional health.

Cyrus Ahalt is a Program

Director and Brie Williams is a

Professor of Medicine, both at

the Department of Medicine,

University of California, San

Francisco, San Francisco,

California, USA.

DOI 10.1108/IJPH-05-2017-0023 VOL. 13 NO. 3/4 2017, pp. 137-138, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1744-9200

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Guest editorial