By Keramet Reiter, Joseph Ventura, David Lovell, Dallas Augustine, Melissa Barragan

Objectives. To specify symptoms and measure prevalence of psychological distress among incarcerated people in long-term solitary confinement. Methods. We gathered data via semistructured, in-depth interviews; Brief PsychiatricRating Scale (BPRS) assessments; and systematic reviews of medical and disciplinary filesfor 106 randomly selected people in solitary confinement in the Washington StateDepartment of Corrections in 2017. We performed 1-year follow-up interviews and BPRS assessments with 80 of these incarcerated people, and we present the results of our qualitative content analysis and descriptive statistics.Results. BPRS results showed clinically significant symptoms of depression, anxiety, orguilt among half of our research sample. Administrative data showed disproportionately high rates of serious mental illness and self-harming behavior compared with general prison populations. Interview content analysis revealed additional symptoms, including social isolation, loss of identity, and sensory hypersensitivity.Conclusions. Our coordinated study of rating scale, interview, and administrative data illustrates the public health crisis of solitary confinement. Because 95% or more of all incarcerated people, including those who experienced solitary confinement, are even-tually released, understanding disproportionate psychopathology matters for developing prevention policies and addressing the unique needs of people who have experienced solitary confinement, an extreme element of mass incarceration.

Am J Public Health. 2020, 7 p.

By Anneliese N. Luck

Jail incarceration remains an overlooked yet crucial component of the U.S. carceral system. Although a growing literature has examined the mortality costs associated with residing in areas with high levels of incarceration, far less is known about how local jails shape this burden at the intersection of race, sex, and age. In this study, I examine the relationship between county-level jail incarceration and age-specific mortality for non-Hispanic Black and White men and women, uniquely leveraging race-specific jail rates to account for the unequal racial distribution of jail exposures. This study finds evidence of positive associations between mortality and jail incarceration: this association peaks in late adulthood (ages 50–64), when increases in jail rates are associated with roughly 3% increases in mortality across all race–sex groups. However, patterns vary at the intersection of race, sex, and age. In particular, I find more marked and consistent penalties among women than among men. Additionally, a distinctly divergent age pattern emerges among Black men, who face insignificant but negative associations at younger ages but steep penalties at older ages—significantly larger among those aged 65 or older relative to their White male and Black female counterparts. Evidence further suggests that the use of race-neutral incarceration measures in prior work may mask the degree of harm associated with carceral contexts, because the jail rate for the total population underestimates the association between jail rates and mortality across nearly all race–age–sex combinations. These findings highlight the need for future ecological research to differentiate between jail and prison incarceration, consider the demographic distribution of incarceration's harms, and incorporate racialized measures of exposure so that we may better capture the magnitude of harm associated with America's carceral state.

Demography (2024) 61 (5): 1455–1482.