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(Reuters Health) - Black men are half as likely to die at any given time if
they're in prison than if they aren't, suggests a new study of North
Carolina inmates.
The black prisoners seemed to be especially protected against alcohol- and
drug-related deaths, as well as lethal accidents and certain chronic
diseases.
But that pattern didn't hold for white men, who on the whole were slightly
more likely to die in prison than outside, according to findings published
in Annals of Epidemiology.
Researchers say it's not the first time a study has found lower death rates
among certain groups of inmates -- particularly disadvantaged people, who
might get protection against violent injuries and murder.
"Ironically, prisons are often the only provider of medical care accessible
by these underserved and vulnerable Americans," said Hung-En Sung of the
John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
"Typically, prison-based care is more comprehensive than what inmates have
received prior to their admission," Sung, who wasn't involved in the new
study, told Reuters Health by email.
The new study involved about 100,000 men between age 20 and 79 who were held
in North Carolina prisons at some point between 1995 and 2005. Sixty
percent of those men were black.
Researchers linked prison and state health records to determine which of the
inmates died, and of what causes, during their prison stay. Then they
compared those figures with expected deaths in men of the same age and race
in the general population.
Less than one percent of men died during incarceration, and there was no
difference between black and white inmates. But outside prison walls, blacks
have a higher rate of death at any given age than whites.
"What's very sad about this is that if we are able to all of a sudden
equalize or diminish these health inequalities that you see by race inside a
place like prison, it should also be that in places like a poor
neighborhood we should be able to diminish these sort of inequities," said
Evelyn Patterson, who studies correctional facilities at Vanderbilt
University in Nashville, Tennessee.
"If it can be done (in prison), then certainly it can happen outside of
prison," Patterson, who wasn't linked to the new work, told Reuters Health.
As in the general population, cancer and heart and blood vessel diseases
were the most common cause of death among inmates -- accounting for more
than half of deaths.
White prisoners died of cardiovascular diseases as often as expected and
died of cancer slightly more often than non-prisoners.
Black inmates, by contrast, were between 30 and 40 percent less likely to
die of those causes than those who weren't incarcerated. They were also less
likely to die of diabetes, alcohol- and drug-related causes, airway
diseases, accidents, suicide and murder than black men not in prison.
All told, their risk of death at any age was only half that of men living in
the community.
For white men, the overall death rate was slightly higher -- by about 12
percent -- than in the general population, with some of that attributed to
higher rates of death from infection, including HIV and hepatitis. When the
researchers broke prisoners up by age, death rates were only higher for
white prisoners age 50 and older.
"For some populations, being in prison likely provides benefits in regards
to access to healthcare and life expectancy," said study author Dr. David
Rosen, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
But, he added in an email, "it's important to remember that there are many
possible negative consequences of imprisonment -- for example, broken
relationships, loss of employment opportunities, and greater entrenchment in
criminal activity -- that are not reflected in our study findings but
nevertheless have an important influence on prisoners' lives and their
overall health."
For Rosen, one of the main messages from the study is the need to make the
world outside of prison walls safer, and to make sure people living there
have adequate access to healthcare.
SOURCE: bit.ly/o7a7st Annals of Epidemiology, online July 7, 2011. |
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