Effects of Incarceration on the Health Care System
A new study, led by Professor of Sociology Jason Schnittker and published in the September issue of The Milbank Quarterly, finds that states with the highest incarceration rates experience significant declines in overall access to and quality of care. Schnittker, along with colleagues from the University of Minnesota and the University of Georgia, address the ties between the prison system and other social systems, and brings to light the broader social costs of incarceration.
“There’s an emerging consensus that we incarcerate too many people and that incarceration has a huge negative impact on the lives of former inmates,” Schnittker said. “There were reasons to expect that incarceration could, through a series of steps, affect health care systems. Our job was to show how that could happen.”
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