Understanding Vaccine Hesitancy in U.S. Prisons: Perspectives from a Statewide Survey of Incarcerated People.

Much of the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic was characterized by a divergence between general public opinion and public health policy. With little attention paid to individuals incarcerated during this time, there is limited direct evidence regarding how incarcerated people perceived efforts to mediate the harms of COVID-19. Prisons operate as a microcosm of society in many ways but they also face unique public health challenges. This study examines vaccine hesitancy-and acceptance-among a sample of individuals incarcerated within adult prisons in Pennsylvania. Using administrative records as well as rich attitudinal data from a survey of the incarcerated population, this study identifies a variety of social and historical factors that are-and are not-associated with an incarcerated person's willingness to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Our findings highlight vaccination challenges unique to the carceral context and offer policy recommendations to improve trust in credible health messengers and health service provision for this often overlooked but vulnerable population.

Feminist perspectives on environmental justice and health in Jamaica.

Jamaica is an island nation with a history that is informed by Taino settlement, European colonisation, chattel slavery, disinvestment, and continued extractivism. This perspective paper leverages a historical analysis to explore environmental injustices affecting the health and quality of life of Jamaicans living in Jamaica. This article hopes to contribute to a growing but limited body of scholarly research that contends with environmental and climate justice in the context of the Caribbean. In discussing a lack of critical environmental infrastructure, such as reliable solid waste management, and the impacts of extractive industries, such as bauxite mining, the paper intends to highlight the environmental, public health, and social harms that are produced. Employing an intersectional approach grounded in Black feminist epistemology put forward by Patricia Hill Collins, the authors use their lived experiences as a source of knowledge. The paper analyses how these environmental injustices harm Jamaican communities at large but underscores the compounded challenges faced by Jamaican women who experience marginalisation on the basis of gender, urban/rural residency, and class. The paper concludes by urging researchers, policymakers, regulatory bodies, and other stakeholders to conduct further research and create sustainable and equitable environmental standards that have considerations for environmental injustice in Jamaica.

COVID-19 Vaccine Refusal and Medical Distrust Held by Correctional Officers.

This study explores COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among prison security staff and the extent to which they trust varied sources of information about the vaccines. Cross-sectional survey data were obtained from a state-wide sample of corrections officers (COs, hereafter; n = 1208) in February 2021. Group differences, disaggregated by demographic characteristics, were examined using F-tests and t-tests. Despite the comparatively limited risk of contracting the virus, non-security staff reported they would accept a COVID-19 vaccine at no cost (74%), compared to their more vulnerable CO counterparts (49%). We observed vaccine refusal correlations between COs' reported gender, age, and length of time working as a CO, but none with their self-reported race. Vaccine refusal was more prevalent among womxn officers, younger officers, and those who had spent less time working as prison security staff. Our findings also suggest that the only trusted source of information about vaccines were family members and only for officers who would refuse the vaccine; the quality of trust placed in those sources, however, was not substantially positive and did not vary greatly across CO racial groups. By highlighting characteristics of the observed gaps in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance between COs and their non-security staff coworkers, as well as between corrections officers of varied demographic backgrounds, these findings can inform the development of responsive and accepted occupational health policies for communities both inside and intrinsically linked to prisons.

Negative illness feedbacks: High-frisk policing reduces civilian reliance on ED services.

OBJECTIVE: This paper demonstrates that localized and chronic stop-question-and-frisk (SQF) practices are associated with community members' utilization of emergency department (ED) resources. To explain this relationship, we explore the empirical applicability of a legal epidemiological framework, or the study of legal institutional influences on the distribution of disease and injury. DATA AND STUDY DESIGN: Analyses are derived from merging data from the Philadelphia Vehicle and Pedestrians Investigation, the National Historical Geographic Information System, and the Southeastern Philadelphia Community Health database to zip code identifiers common to all datasets. Weighted multilevel negative binomial regressions measure the influence that local SQF practices have on ED use for this population. Analytic methods incorporate patient demographic covariates including household size, health insurance status, and having a doctor as a usual source of care. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Findings reveal that both tract-level frisking and poor health are linked to more frequent use of hospital EDs, per respondent report. Despite their health care needs, however, reporting poor/fair health status is associated with a substantial decrease in the rate of emergency department visits as neighborhood frisk concentration increases (IRR = 0.923; 95% CI: 0.891, 0.957). Moreover, more sickly people in high-frisk neighborhoods live in tracts that have greater racial disparities in frisking-a pattern that accounts for the moderating role of neighborhood frisking in sick people's usage of the emergency room. CONCLUSIONS: Findings indicating the robust association reported above interrogate the chronic incompatibility of local health and human service system aims. The study also provides an interdisciplinary theoretical lens through which stakeholders can make sense of these challenges and their implications.

The force of fear: Police stereotype threat, self-legitimacy, and support for excessive force.

Researchers have linked police officers' concerns with appearing racist-a kind of stereotype threat-to racial disparities in the use of force. This study presents the first empirical test of the hypothesized psychological mechanism linking stereotype threat to police support for violence. We hypothesized that stereotype threat undermines officers' self-legitimacy, or the confidence they have in their inherent authority, encouraging overreliance on coercive policing to maintain control. Officers (n = 784) from the patrol division of a large urban police force completed a survey in order to test this hypothesis. Respondents completed measures of stereotype threat, self-legitimacy, resistance to use of force policy, approval of unreasonable force, and endorsement of procedurally fair policing. Structural equation models showed that elevated stereotype threat was associated with lower self-legitimacy (ß = -.15), which in turn was associated with more resistance to restrictions on force (ß = -.17), greater approval of unreasonable force (ß = -.31), and lower endorsement of fair policing (ß = .57). These results reveal that concerns about appearing racist are actually associated with increased support for coercive policing-potentially further eroding public trust. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The criminogenic and psychological effects of police stops on adolescent black and Latino boys.

Proactive policing, the strategic targeting of people or places to prevent crimes, is a well-studied tactic that is ubiquitous in modern law enforcement. A 2017 National Academies of Sciences report reviewed existing literature, entrenched in deterrence theory, and found evidence that proactive policing strategies can reduce crime. The existing literature, however, does not explore what the short and long-term effects of police contact are for young people who are subjected to high rates of contact with law enforcement as a result of proactive policing. Using four waves of longitudinal survey data from a sample of predominantly black and Latino boys in ninth and tenth grades, we find that adolescent boys who are stopped by police report more frequent engagement in delinquent behavior 6, 12, and 18 months later, independent of prior delinquency, a finding that is consistent with labeling and life course theories. We also find that psychological distress partially mediates this relationship, consistent with the often stated, but rarely measured, mechanism for adolescent criminality hypothesized by general strain theory. These findings advance the scientific understanding of crime and adolescent development while also raising policy questions about the efficacy of routine police stops of black and Latino youth. Police stops predict decrements in adolescents' psychological well-being and may unintentionally increase their engagement in criminal behavior.

The mismeasure of Terry stops: Assessing the psychological and emotional harms of stop and frisk to individuals and communities.

In Terry v. Ohio, the US Supreme Court relied on a balancing test to uphold the reasonableness of the practice known as "stop and frisk," balancing the contribution of the practice to effective crime prevention and detection against the nature and quality of the intrusion to individual rights. In recent years, statistics have been powerfully deployed by legal scholars, jurists, and policymakers to challenge the assumption that stop and frisk leads to frequent discovery of contraband or other criminal behavior, and to address stark racial and ethnic disparities in the deployment of stop and frisk. However, the other side of the Terry equation-the nature and quality of the intrusion-has received far less attention from the legal community. With few exceptions, Terry jurisprudence portrays the Terry frisk simply as a brief pat-down of the outer clothing and treats each Terry stop as an isolated encounter for purposes of measuring the harm involved. Yet there is a robust social science literature on the effects of stop and frisk on individuals, including data on its effects on individuals from marginalized or vulnerable groups, on individuals over time, and on communities as a whole. Moreover, stop and frisk in the current era has evolved from a tool in the arsenal of individual officers to a systematic, widely deployed strategy. This article argues that the failure to grapple with the application of modern knowledge to modern policing practices leads to a mismeasurement on both sides of the Terry equation. Not only does stop and frisk cause a wide range of emotional and psychological harms; these harms may also interfere with the ability of law enforcement to prevent and investigate crime. Even apart from any legal doctrinal implications for stop and frisk jurisprudence, recognizing the flawed assumptions described in this article should encourage all the relevant stakeholders to re-evaluate the consequences of the Terry regime.

Exploring how prison-based drug rehabilitation programming shapes racial disparities in substance use disorder recovery.

Prison-based therapeutic community (TC) programming is derived from the perspective that drug addiction is primarily symptomatic of cognitive dysfunction, poor emotional management, and underdeveloped self-reliance skills, and can be addressed in a collaborative space where a strong ideological commitment to moral reform and personal responsibility is required of its members. In this space, evidence of rehabilitation is largely centered on the client's relationship to language and the public adoption of a "broken self" narrative. Failure to master these linguistic performances can result in the denial of material and symbolic resources, thus participants learn how to use TC language to present themselves in ways that support existing institutionalized hierarchies, even if that surrender spells their self-denigration. This research examines the interview narratives of 300 former prisoners who participated in a minimum of 12 months of prison-based TC programming, and described how programming rhetoric impacted their substance abuse treatment experiences. While many of the respondents described distressing experiences as TC participants, White respondents were more likely to eventually embrace the "addict" label and speak of privileges and reintegrative support subsequently received. Black respondents were more likely to defy the treatment rhetoric, and either fail to complete the program or simulate a deficit-based self-narrative without investing in the content of those stories. The following explores the significance of language and identity construction in these carceral spaces, and how treatment providers as well as agency agendas are implicated in the reproduction of racial disparities in substance abuse recovery.