Monitoring and improving the health and justice-involved populations: A public health approach

The prison system serves as a filter for the most disadvantaged and unwell members of our community. For example, more than a third of prison entrants have hepatitis C, most are dependent on at least one substance and in any given year 80% will experience a mental illness. Indigenous people are over-represented by a factor of 13.

Prisons provide a rare opportunity to identify and initiate care for these often unmet health needs, but the health gains achieved in custody are usually rapidly lost after return to the community. For ex-prisoners, the risk of preventable death is elevated by orders of magnitude and return to custody is normative. The greater challenge – and the greater public health opportunity – lies in maintaining and building on the successes of prison health services, once these marginalised and vulnerable individuals return to their communities.

The program of research has three components:

  • longitudinal studies to understand how health needs and patterns of health care utilisation change as people cycle into and out of the criminal justice system.
  • intervention studies to rigorously evaluate interventions intended to improve health outcomes for these individuals.
  • synthesis of the evidence globally both to identify principles that are relevant across settings, and to document important differences across settings and subgroups.

Dissemination of this knowledge will occur through existing networks including the National Prisoner Health Information Committee, the Australian CRE in Offender Health and the Public Health Association of Australia.

Aims

  1. Undertake a program of research to understand the health care needs of justice-involved people and develop effective, affordable interventions to meet these needs.
  2. Translate the findings of this research into policy using evidence-informed strategies and building on more than a decade of collaboration with key decision makers in Australia.

Project Leader: Professor Stuart Kinner (Griffith University)

Project Value: $654,000

Type of Funding: National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Fellowship

Dates: 2015-2019

Theme/s: Corrections and Sentencing

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