Bruce Western’s research while affiliated with Columbia University and other places

Harsh prison conditions have been widely examined for their effects on the mental health of incarcerated people, but few studies have examined whether mental health status exposes individuals to harsh treatment in the penal system. With prisoners confined to their cells for up to 23 hours each day, often being denied visitors or phone calls, solitary confinement is an important case for studying harsh treatment in prisons. Routinely used as punishment for prison infractions, solitary confinement may be subject to the same forces that criminalize the mentally ill in community settings. Analyzing a large administrative data set showing admissions to solitary confinement in state prison, we find high rates of punitive isolation among those with serious mental illness. Disparities by mental health status result from the cumulative effects of prison misconduct charges and disciplinary hearings. We estimate that those with serious mental illness spend three times longer in solitary confinement than similar incarcerated people with no mental health problems. The evidence suggests the stigma of dangerousness follows people into prison, and the criminalization of mental illness accompanies greater severity of incarceration.

In a given year, one in five people incarcerated in the U.S. prisons is locked in solitary confinement. We study solitary confinement along three dimensions of penal harm: (1) material deprivation, (2) social isolation, and (3) psychological distress. Data from a longitudinal survey of incarcerated men who are interviewed at baseline in solitary confinement are used to contrast the most extreme form of penal custody with general prison conditions observed at a follow-up interview. Solitary confinement is associated with extreme material deprivation and social isolation that accompanies psychological distress. Distress is greatest for those with histories of mental illness. Inactivity and feelings of dehumanization revealed in qualitative interviews help explain the distress of extreme isolation, lending empirical support to legal arguments that solitary confinement threatens human dignity.

Research on the mental health consequences of solitary confinement has contributed to restrictions on its use, particularly for people with serious mental illness. However, solitary confinement continues to isolate people with physical and mental health problems, even where its use has been restricted. This mixed-methods analysis seeks to evaluate the practice of solitary confinement on mental and physical health using data from a sample of 99 men in Pennsylvania. We first describe patterns of multimorbidity among men in solitary confinement using a latent class analysis to group individuals with shared demographic attributes and mental and physical health conditions. We then use thematic analysis to explore how men from each of these groups experienced and managed health concerns in solitary confinement. Our findings describe significant physical and mental health burdens and unmet healthcare needs. Over three-quarters of respondents reported a physical health diagnosis such as heart disease or diabetes, and over half reported a mental health diagnosis, including anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia. Those with pre-existing, often multiple, health issues struggled to maintain their health given restrictions to daily living, isolated idle time, and limited healthcare access in solitary confinement. These aspects of solitary confinement also challenged those who entered solitary in relatively good health. These findings demonstrate the struggle for self-advocacy in maintaining health and healthcare access under extreme conditions of confinement and point to the need to prevent the health harms of solitary confinement by further restricting its use.

Solitary confinement is a severe form of incarceration closely associated with long-lasting psychological harm and poor post-release outcomes. Estimating the population prevalence, we find that 11% of all black men in Pennsylvania, born 1986 to 1989, were incarcerated in solitary confinement by age 32. Reflecting large racial disparities, the population prevalence is only 3.4% for Latinos and 1.4% for white men. About 9% of black men in the state cohort were held in solitary for more than 15 consecutive days, violating the United Nations standards for minimum treatment of incarcerated people. Nearly 1 in 100 black men experienced solitary for a year or longer by age 32. Racial disparities are similar for women, but rates are lower. A decomposition shows that black men’s high risk of solitary confinement stems primarily from their high imprisonment rate. Findings suggest that harsh conditions of U.S. incarceration have population-level effects on black men’s well-being.

A large social science research literature examines the effects of prisons on crime and socioeconomic inequality, but the penal institution itself is often a black box overlooked in the analysis of its effects. This paper examines prisons and their role in rehabilitative programs and as venues for violence, health and healthcare, and extreme isolation through solitary confinement. Research shows that incarcerated people are participating less today than in the 1980s in prison programs, and they face high risks of violence, disease, and isolation. Prison conditions suggest the mechanisms that impair adjustment to community life after release provide a more complete account of the costs of incarceration and indicate the performance of prisons as moral institutions that bear a responsibility for humane and decent treatment.

Significance Research on incarceration has focused on prisons, but the scale of admissions to local jails is significantly higher. The average length of stay in jail is brief compared to imprisonment, but jail incarceration has been found to adversely affect court outcomes, earnings, and family life. Although New York has one of the lowest jail incarceration rates among large cities, over a quarter of Black men and a sixth of Latino men in the city have been jailed by age 38 y. Risks of jail incarceration are 40 to 50% higher in poor neighborhoods.

With poor health and widespread drug problems in the U.S. prison population, post-prison drug use provides an important measure of both public health and social integration following incarceration. We study the correlates of drug use with data from the Boston Reentry Study (BRS), a survey of men and women interviewed four times over the year after prison release. The BRS data allow an analysis of legal and illegal drug use, and the correlation between them. We find that illegal drug use is associated with histories of drug problems and childhood trauma. Use of medications is associated with poor physical health and a history of mental illness. Legal and illegal drug use are not strongly correlated. Results suggest that in a Medicaid expansion state where health coverage is widely provided to people leaving prison, formerly-incarcerated men and women use medications, not illegal drugs, to address their health needs.

Past research has found that participation in extracurricular activities helps develop children's cultural capital that is crucial to both education and career successes. Previous studies have examined various determinants of extracurricular participation, but mostly focused on social class, demographics, and school characteristics. In this paper we renew the Coleman tradition by putting social capital (as measured by family structure and neighborhood cohesion) in the spotlight and studying the effect of social capital on youth participation in organized extracurricular activities. By using longitudinal data from the 2004 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation of representative households in the U.S. and conducting various robust statistical analyses, we provide updated results on the subject. We find that a two-parent household (especially in relative to households with cohabiting parents) and neighborhood cohesion (i.e., a set of cohesive relationships among parents in the neighborhood) both have a positive and significant association with extracurricular participation. We also find such associations vary somewhat by child's sex, age, race, and the type of extracurricular activity. We conclude that to equalize children's participation in extracurricular activities future social policies should consider interventions that target low-income families and families with single-parent or cohabiting parents, that can improve neighborhood cohesion, and that are tailored by the type of extracurricular activity.