People reentering communities after incarceration are sicker than the general population and face barriers to accessing health care and other supports. Along with criminal justice reform, policy makers must work to improve evidence-based reentry programming that supports healthy people and communities.

Key Points:

• Mass incarceration in the United States is a public health crisis that disproportionately affects Black and Brown people and their communities. Incarceration can exacerbate health conditions and complicate health and justice outcomes for both reentering people and the communities to which they return.
• Disproportionate rates of mental health issues, suicide, substance use disorders, disabilities, and physical disorders plague the reentry population.
• The reentry population faces complex barriers to health care access and often experiences homelessness, unemployment, and a lack of social and family support.
• Justice-based interventions for the reentry population generally focus on life skills or individual deficits. Compared with approaches that focus on health and well-being, these programs are unlikely to achieve identity transformation and self-efficacy in managing health and other needs.
• Savings from reform of the criminal justice system could be reinvested to make successful reentry achievable.
• Public officials should include health care as a key component of community reentry programming by supporting access to Medicaid prerelease and seamless coordination of health care in communities postrelease.

To read the complete article from Health Affairs.org, click here.