The tragic stories of Ashley Smith, Edward Snowshoe and other inmates who have died in Canadian correctional facilities have rightly made headlines. Less well known are the premature deaths of hundreds of Canadians every year from preventable causes after they are released from jails and prisons.
Canadians might be surprised to learn that many health and social services widely available in the community are not available in most Canadian correctional facilities. We are missing a critical opportunity to reframe incarceration as a time to help people improve their health and well-being before returning to our communities.
We recently published a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal Open that looked at the rates and causes of death for people who had been incarcerated. When we examined instances of death in almost 50,000 former Ontario provincial inmates over a 12-year period, we found a shocking discrepancy in life expectancy.
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[For more of this story, written by Fiona Kouyoumdjian, go to http://www.newsoptimist.ca/opi...er-release-1.2266683]
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