Race/Ethnic Disparities in the Utilization of Treatment for Drug Dependent Inmates in U.S. State Correctional Facilities

• In Event: 043 - Section on Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Colleges, Sports, and Prisons: Social Contexts of Drug Use

Abstract

This study examines the race/ethnic disparities in treatment for drug dependent inmates. The data come from the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities. The sample includes 4,507 inmates housed within 286 prisons. Multi-level modeling is used to account for the hierarchical nature of the data. The dichotomous outcome measure (treatment) is examined using hierarchical generalized linear models with a linked logit function. The analysis accounts for differences in background characteristics (i.e., age, gender, marital status, foreign born status, veteran status), socioeconomic characteristics (i.e., education, employment prior to incarceration), mental health (i.e., diagnosis with a serious mental illness), and incarceration experiences (i.e., current conviction, previous incarceration episodes, time served, additional sentencing requirements, external social bonds, disciplinary violations) as well as the prison environment (i.e., housed within medical or geriatric correctional facilities, proportion black, Latino, under 25 years old, violent offenders, receiving job training, and ever in solitary confinement). The variance components model indicates that, on average, 44 percent of drug dependent inmates have utilized some type of substance use treatment. Compared to whites, drug dependent inmates of color have significantly lower rates of utilizing treatment. The addition of statistical controls explains the disparity among blacks but only partially explains the disparity among Latinos. The findings suggest that it is differences in background and socioeconomic characteristics of inmates that largely account for these disparities.

Author

• Kathryn Marie Nowotny, University of Colorado-Boulder