Jail and overdose: assessing the community impact of incarceration on overdose

Abstract

Background and aims Incarceration produces a specific public health threat for drug overdose, and correctional settings do not offer medication for opioid use disorder. This study examined the overall impact of jail incarceration on overdose, the specific hazard for those booked on a syringe-related charge and the proportion of all overdose decedents in the community who were in the jail prior to death. Design and setting A cohort study of fatal overdose outcomes among a sample of individuals booked into and released from jail between

Impacts of COVID-19 at the intersection of substance use disorder treatment and criminal justice systems: findings from three states

“…While releases and decarceration are broadly seen as positive, this created issues with SUD/OUD community treatment linkage. This is because the combination of sudden decarceration and restrictions on community treatment intakes created a bottleneck with individuals not being consistently or expeditiously connected with services, a crucial issue given evidence for increased risk of and high rates of drug-related deaths following release from carceral settings (Jourdrey et al 2019 ; Merrall et al, 2010 ; Victor et al, 2022 ). Service gaps created at the intersection of decarceration and reductions in available treatment services underscore the need to increase collaboration between the justice system and treatment providers.…”

How the war on drugs impacts social determinants of health beyond the criminal legal system

“…Research suggests that only 5% of clients with opioid use disorder (OUD), who were referred to treatment from the criminal legal system, received either methadone or buprenorphine, compared to nearly 40% those who were not referred by the system [ 138 ]. This represents an extension of a broader problem within the criminal legal system wherein access to these gold standard medications for OUD is almost nonexistent in most jails and prisons across the U.S [ 139 ].…”

Flipping the Script on Criminal Justice Risk Assessment: An actuarial model for assessing the risk the federal sentencing system poses to defendants

“…A broad definition of public safety may include concerns about the public health effects of short stays in jail while awaiting trial [44,53,74], the heightened risk of incarceration itself (illness, injury, death, etc.) for people [92,93,100,101,104], the likely financial and emotional harm to families and loved ones [12,90,94], the risk of time spent in jail inducing future criminal activity [37,39,50], and more follow-on effects [96] that make our society less safe. In practice, most modern pretrial tools focus on the likelihood that a person will be rearrested as a proxy for the concept of public safety even though the vast majority of rearrest activities are not for violence [18], and even violence-focused rearrests are not reliable proxies for conviction of offenses [30].…”