Kathryn Nowotny, Hannah Metheny, Katherine LeMasters and Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein
The USA has a rapidly aging prison population that, combined with their poorer health and living conditions, is at extreme risk for COVID-19. The purpose of this paper is to…
Abstract
Purpose
The USA has a rapidly aging prison population that, combined with their poorer health and living conditions, is at extreme risk for COVID-19. The purpose of this paper is to compare COVID-19 mortality trends in the US prison population and the general population to see how mortality risk changed over the course of the pandemic. The authors first provide a national overview of trends in COVID-19 mortality; then, the authors assess COVID-19 deaths among older populations using more detailed data from one US state.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used multiple publicly available data sets (e.g. Centers for Disease Control and prevention, COVID Prison Project) and indirect and direct standardization to estimate standardized mortality rates covering the period from April 2020 to June 2021 for the US and for the State of Texas.
Findings
While 921 COVID-19-related deaths among people in US prisons were expected as of June 5, 2021, 2,664 were observed, corresponding to a standardized mortality ratio of 2.89 (95%CI 2.78, 3.00). The observed number of COVID-19-related deaths exceeded the expected number of COVID-19-related deaths among people in prison for most of the pandemic, with a substantially widening gap leading to a plateau about four weeks after the COVID-19 vaccine was introduced in the USA. In the state population, the older population in prison is dying at younger ages compared with the general population, with the highest percentage of deaths among people aged 50–64 years.
Research limitations/implications
People who are incarcerated are dying of COVID-19 at a rate that far outpaces the general population and are dying at younger ages.
Originality/value
This descriptive analysis serves as a first step in understanding the dynamic trends in COVID-19 mortality and the association between age and COVID-19 death in US prisons.
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Emily Dauria, Angelo Clemenzi-Allen, Kathryn Nowotny, Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, Brie Williams and Alysse Wurcel
Vaccinating adults who are involved with the carceral system, particularly those aged 55 or older, is crucial to containing the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA, particularly as…
Abstract
Purpose
Vaccinating adults who are involved with the carceral system, particularly those aged 55 or older, is crucial to containing the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA, particularly as variants continue to emerge and spread. In this Viewpoint, the authors discuss the reasons why improving access to COVID-19 vaccine and boosters among community supervised adults, especially the aging population, is critical to mitigating the public health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study concludes by providing recommendations to enhance vaccine and booster uptake in this population, as the pandemic continues.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a Viewpoint paper regarding mitigating the spread of COVID-19 by improving access to vaccine and boosters among community supervised adults, especially the aging population.
Findings
A key population that has been overlooked in vaccination efforts are older adults involved in the carceral system who are living in the community (i.e. “community supervised” or people on probation or parole). Older adults on probation and parole are at high risk for SARS-CoV-2 transmission and severe disease due to numerous factors at the individual, community, social and structural levels.
Originality/value
Implementation of recommendations presented in this Viewpoint will mitigate COVID-19 risk among a population that has been marginalized and overlooked, yet has been the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This review integrates and builds linkages among existing theoretical and empirical literature from across disciplines to further broaden our understanding of the relationship…
Abstract
This review integrates and builds linkages among existing theoretical and empirical literature from across disciplines to further broaden our understanding of the relationship between inequality, imprisonment, and health for black men. The review examines the health impact of prisons through an ecological theoretical perspective to understand how factors at multiple levels of the social ecology interact with prisons to potentially contribute to deleterious health effects and the exacerbation of race/ethnic health disparities.
This review finds that there are documented health disparities between inmates and non-inmates, but the casual mechanisms explaining this relationship are not well-understood. Prisons may interact with other societal systems – such as the family (microsystem), education, and healthcare systems (meso/exosystems), and systems of racial oppression (macrosystem) – to influence individual and population health.
The review also finds that research needs to move the discussion of the race effects in health and crime/justice disparities beyond the mere documentation of such differences toward a better understanding of their causes and effects at the level of individuals, communities, and other social ecologies.
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Kathryn M. Nowotny, Jennifer L. Fackler, Gianncarlo Muschi, Carol Vargas, Lindsey Wilson and Joseph A. Kotarba
We report on an ethnographic study of four established music scenes in which Latino music is produced, performed, experienced, and celebrated in Houston, Texas: conjunto…
Abstract
We report on an ethnographic study of four established music scenes in which Latino music is produced, performed, experienced, and celebrated in Houston, Texas: conjunto, mariachi, salsa, and Latin jazz. This paper builds upon previous work that has examined emergent music scenes in Houston by incorporating three distinctly interactionist concepts – the scene, idioculture, and place – to illustrate established scenes. Our examination demonstrates that authenticity is a distinctly sociological concept, one that provides valuable insight into understanding the meanings that music has for the everyday actor.
Music is an important feature of human group life. A wide range of journals, books, and other academic avenues pertaining to the study of music now exist to address its increasing…
Abstract
Music is an important feature of human group life. A wide range of journals, books, and other academic avenues pertaining to the study of music now exist to address its increasing scholarly significance. Although the primary theme in the literature seems to be the description and analysis of the role of music in daily life, the time has come for more theoretical examinations of the way music contributes meaning to individuals and the groups to which they belong (DeNora, 2003). Our goal as editors of this special issue is to apply the symbolic interactionist optic to the sociological study of music. We hope to build upon the earlier interactionist work of scholars such as Kotarba and Vannini (2006) through the concepts of identity, technology, and music communities. In the present section, we explore the relationship of music and identity.
Kathryn Ashton, Aimee Challenger, Christie Craddock, Timo Clemens, Jordan Williams, Oliver Kempton, Mariana Dyakova and Liz Green
The sexual health of the male prison population is often among the poorest in a country. This paper aims to identify the wider health impacts and social value of a sexual health…
Abstract
Purpose
The sexual health of the male prison population is often among the poorest in a country. This paper aims to identify the wider health impacts and social value of a sexual health self-sampling programme offered to male prisoners in an open prison setting in Wales.
Design/methodology/approach
This study applied a unique pilot approach of using Health Impact Assessment and Social Return on Investment Frameworks in tandem. Key stakeholder groups affected by the intervention were identified, and engaged with through workshops, interviews and questionnaires to identify and quantify the health impacts and wider outcomes. Outcomes were then valued using proxy financial values to present the overall estimated social value of the self-sampling service.
Findings
Based on a small sample, results indicate that for every £1 spent on the self-sampling service in the prison, a potential value of £4.14 was created. This resulted in a ratio of £4.14:£1. Approximately one-third of the value created (£1,517.95) was categorised as monetarily returnable, whereas the remaining value (£3,260.40) was purely illustrative social value, for example improved mental well-being.
Originality/value
This unique pilot study demonstrates the health impacts and wider social value of providing a self-sampling sexual health service to prisoners within an open prison setting. By innovatively testing the feasibility of using a Health Impact Assessment process alongside Social Return on Investment analyses, this paper has outlined how the frameworks can be used in synergy to illustrate not just direct return on investment but also the social value of providing such a service.
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Debalina Maitra and Brooke Coley
The goal of this study is to explore an immediate step in understanding the lived experiences of under-represented students through metaphor construction and possibly collect more…
Abstract
Purpose
The goal of this study is to explore an immediate step in understanding the lived experiences of under-represented students through metaphor construction and possibly collect more in-depth data through photograph-based interviews.
Design/Methodology/Approach
This article introduced photo-elicitation based narrative interviews as a qualitative methodology while interviewing fourteen undergraduate community college students mostly from underrepresented groups (URGs). At the beginning of each interview, the authors probed the participants with 8 photographs chosen by the research team to represent a diverse set of experiences in engineering. The authors conducted a thematic analysis of the interview data.
Findings
The findings suggested that the inclusion of photo-elicitation often catalyzed consumption of representations, images, metaphors, and voice to stories passed unnoticed; and finally produces more detailed descriptions and complements semi-structured narrative interviews.
Research Limitations/Implications
This study advances the scholarship that extends photograph driven interviews/photo elicitation methodology while interviewing marginalized population and offers a roadmap for what a multi-modal, arts-based analysis process might look like for in-depth interviews.
Practical Implications
The use of photo-elicitation in our research enabled a deeper, more poignant exploration of the URG students' experience of navigating engineering. The participants were able to relate to the photographs and shared their life narratives through them; hence, use of photographs can be adapted in future research.
Social Implications
Our research revealed that PEI has excellent potential to capture marginalized narratives of URGs, which is not well explored in educational research, specially, in higher education. In our research, PEI promoted more culturally inclusive approaches positioning the participants as experts of their own narratives.
Originality/Value
The study presented in this paper serves as an example of qualitative research that expands methodological boundaries and centers the role of power, marginalization, and creativity in research. This work serves as a unique and important contribution to the photo-elicitation literature, offering a critical roadmap for researchers who are drawn to photo elicitation/photograph driven interviews as a method to explore their inquiry.