Happy Food for Thought Friday, everyone! As we approach the weekend, we want to share with you some research from the Caribbean island of Martinique.
Martinique is a French overseas administrative district in the Caribbean, with a population of about 400,000 inhabitants. Its only prison is located in the city of Ducos. The study was done by R. Arnal et al and published in Revue d'Épidémiologie et de Santé Publique (Volume 66, Issue 3, May 2018, Pages 201-207) [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respe.2018.03.134]
"The study proposes a description of the psychiatric characteristics of jail inmates in Martinique with epidemiological tools. Its objectives are to highlight their specific features and compare them to mainland France's jail population.
The initial study was a multicenter cross-sectional survey conducted in 18 French prisons. The selection was done using a two-stage stratified sampling strategy. For the purpose of our study, two groups were defined and compared: the detainees from the prison of Ducos (n = 100) were compared to inmates from mainland France (n = 698).
In terms of sociodemographic characteristics, we found more children per prisoner in the Martinican group and a better educational status in the mainland France group. The inmates from Martinique had significantly more adverse experiences in their childhood and the length of incarceration at the time of the interview was longer in the Martinique sample. Major depressive disorders (aOR = 0.51; 95% CI = 0.26–0.95) and psychotic disorders (aOR = 0.24; 95% CI = 0.08–0.57) were significantly less frequent in the Martinique sample.
The authors concluded that even if imprisonment conditions are extremely tough, the inmates carry the heavy burden of difficult family histories, and the use of cannabis seems to be a major problem, it appears that Martinique's jail inmates have lower rates of mental illness than their counterparts from mainland France. We think this could be due to the benefit of greater proximity to their relatives and a united community, both which may contribute to lower prevalence of mental disorders."
Although the abstract does not go into detail about the types of childhood adversity faced by the inmates in Martinique, we have seen in the English speaking Caribbean that issues of poverty, child neglect, separation from a parent, substance abuse by a family member and exposure to domestic abuse feature in the lives of many men in conflict with the law.
We find that the research indicates the benefits of family visitation - especially of the children of inmates - to inmate mental health and rehabilitation. It is hoped that the disparity of sentencing will be addressed as across the Caribbean prison sentences tend to be much longer than those in Europe for similar or identical offences.
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