Mass Incarceration as a Social-Structural Driver of Health Inequities: A Supplement to AJPH

Mass incarceration in the United States is a civil rights, human rights, and public health crisis that is the result of social, political, and economic forces, rooted in enduring legacies of slavery and oppression along lines of race and class. We conceptualized this issue because we believe that the theories, methods, and ethical tenets of public health have a distinct role to play in contributing to a growing movement to end mass incarceration and its multilayered harms on health.