Using Novel Data to Revisit the Incarceration and Mortality Relationship

• In Event: Open Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 7: Crime, Criminalization, and the Carceral State

Abstract

The United States incarcerates more than 1.8 million people, the highest number and rate in the world, with profound consequences for individuals, families, and communities. Incarceration disrupts employment, earnings, and well-being, and is strongly associated with adverse physical and mental health outcomes. Perhaps most critically, evidence shows that formerly incarcerated individuals face elevated risks of premature mortality—especially from drug overdose, homicide, and suicide—during the immediate post-release period and across the life course. Yet despite growing research, key sociological questions remain unresolved, including the roles of race, gender, and incarceration length in shaping mortality risk. Significant data limitations have hindered the ability to assess incarceration as a structural driver of population health and health disparities.

This project leverages a newly created, first-of-its-kind dataset linking detailed incarceration records in Utah to the Utah Population Database (UPDB), one of the world’s most comprehensive sources of demographic and health information. By integrating rich criminal legal data with individual health, family, and mortality records, this dataset enables novel analyses of how incarceration shapes mortality risk for formerly incarcerated individuals relative to matched never-incarcerated peers. The research presented focuses on three components: (1) the construction of this new linked dataset and its unique contributions, including extensive incarceration-event variables; (2) descriptive patterns of premature mortality within the cohort; and (3) implications for sociological theory and prior empirical findings on incarceration and health.

Overall, this project addresses longstanding data constraints in the field and advances research on incarceration as an institutional determinant of health and a contributor to population-level mortality inequalities.

Author

• Katherine Durante, University of Utah