RESUMEN
BACKGROUND: Understanding the health conditions of those under carceral control is often made difficult due to lack of access to data. Yet, as has been made clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, is that data is essential to understand the scope of disease and how best to allocate resources. To better understand the needs of criminal legal oriented research and non-profit organizations, we interviewed stakeholders to better understand how they use existing data, what data they lack, and what data they would like to have to optimally assess the health of people who are incarcerated. RESULTS: Stakeholders reported a lack of trust and data availability as key issues. Many perceived the few institutions that do collect and disseminate data as obfuscating data or having a bias in collection and reporting. Additionally, concerns such as balancing the interest of systems-impacted people with advocacy were described as concerning for participants. CONCLUSIONS: To tackle these issues of transparency and availability, the authors believe that an independent oversight body could be instrumental to ensuring accurate and timely data collection and reporting. As many participants turned to creating their own data, coalition building could be influential as a large network of resources may support capturing the varied experiences of people who are incarcerated.
RESUMEN
While incarceration has proven detrimental to mental well-being, it remains unknown if community supervision is better for mental well-being than incarceration. Our objective was to explore the individual- and community-level relationships between community supervision and mental well-being and to examine inequities by race. We conducted 20 in-depth interviews with individuals on community supervision (e.g., probation, parole) in North Carolina and conducted thematic analysis separately by race. For many, criminal legal involvement began at a young age, often due to substance use for White individuals or over-policing for Black participants. The themes were: (1) "It's a Thursday. Move on.": surviving over the life course in the context of the criminal legal system; (2) "Merry go round of death": the criminal legal system as a trap; (3) "I love you, but I have to love you from over here": social support as a double-edged sword while on community supervision; and (4) " [Probation] ain't nothing but a rope to hang yourself": mental health issues created and exacerbated by criminal legal involvement. Individuals' experiences on community supervision were often dehumanizing and difficult, preventing them from achieving well-being. This system must be redesigned to meet individual and community needs.