Health inequities and incarceration: A public health perspective

Presenter: Dr. Stuart Kinner is Professor of Health Equity at Curtin University, Head of the Justice Health Unit at University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and an Adjunct Professor in the Griffith Criminology Institute. For the past two decades Stuart’s research has focussed on health services and health outcomes for people who come into contact with the criminal justice system. He Chairs Australia’s National Youth Justice Health Advisory Group, and serves on both the WHO Health in Prisons Programme (WHO-HIPP) Steering Group, and the Worldwide Prison Health Research and Engagement Network (WEPHREN) Steering Committee. Summary: People who experience incarceration are distinguished by complex health needs. Incarceration is a setting through which vulnerable and marginalised members of the community pass. Health outcomes after incarceration are predictably poor, including elevated rates of death, due to a variety of preventable causes, in both adults and children. Although there is some evidence that incarceration is health depleting, it is also clear that most people who experience incarceration have significant pre-existing, typically under-served, health-related needs. As such, although reducing incarceration is important from a human rights perspective and *may* confer some health benefits, decarceration is not, per se, sufficient to improve the typically poor health outcomes seen in people who experience incarceration. Therefore, high quality healthcare in custody is important to reducing health inequalities, yet healthcare in custody is often inadequate. Investment in measurable custodial healthcare standards, routine monitoring of custodial healthcare, independent research and evaluation in custodial settings, and coordination between custodial and community healthcare will likely yield health, justice, and economic benefits.

BC CDC Presenters

10/18/2022 7:00:00 PM