Introduction

For the past ten months, I have been working as a Student Intern/Student Worker in the Injury and Violence Prevention Unit (IVPU) at the Minnesota Department of Health. I work on the SEA (Surveillance, Epidemiology and Analysis) Team in the IVPU. My primary responsibilities include collecting data from CDC and other government databases, and running epidemiology tests and statistics on the data in Excel or SAS. Additionally, I make data visualizations and maps of the collected data. One of my main tasks is to compile and analyze data regarding incarceration in Minnesota. The goal of this project was to provide a thorough picture of incarceration in Minnesota, and to inform future policy to help the communities, family members, and former prisoners who face the heavy consequences of incarceration. My other main project, which is still in progress, involves Police Involved Deadly Force Encounters (PIDFEs) in Minnesota. This project involves looking at the circumstances around police involved shootings in Minnesota, writing a case definition, running demographic analysis tests, and hosting fatality reviews.

Relationship to Public Health

The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and the largest criminal justice system in the world. There are significant racial disparities in policing and sentencing. People of color (especially African Americans) are more likely to be arrested than whites, and are more likely to serve longer sentences than their white counterparts. This racial bias is a product of over 400 years of systemic racism in the United States, and of biases and stereotypes about African Americans (Hetey & Eberhardt, 2018).

With respect to public health, incarceration can have devastating effects on families, communities, and those who are released after serving their sentences. Children who have parents incarcerated are often displaced, having to move in with grandparents, other relatives or foster homes, which can cause instability in their lives. Instant effects of having a parent incarcerated can lead to social stigma, loss of economic support, poor performance in school, and increased risks of abuse or neglect. There are also long-term effects that are associated with having a parent incarcerated, such as distrust of the legal system and government, difficulties coping with trauma and stress, and a pattern of intergenerational incarceration (Davis et al., 2011). After they are released from prison, people tend to be worse off than they were before being incarcerated. About 10 to 25 percent of inmates have serious mental health issues, and due to lack of mental health facilities in prisons, these mental health issues often become worse. Incarceration can also lead to an increased risk of suicide, and the loss of resources such as Medicaid and Social Security (American Psychological Association, 2014).

Methods

The incarceration data for my project comes from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, which publishes yearly statistics on the number of people in the United States prison system, providing stratified data by state, race, gender and age. The 2019 data for incarceration in Minnesota is sourced from the Minnesota Department of Corrections. The population data comes from the United States Census Bureau. To calculate the crude rate, I took the number incarcerated and divided it by the total population. I then multiplied that number by 100,000, to get the number of people incarcerated per 100,000. For the maps, I used quantile breaks to make the results of the data clear and easy to understand.

Analysis/Discussion

In general, Minnesota has some of the lowest incarceration rates in the United States, ranking 48th in the overall incarceration rate (192 persons per 100,000), 45th in the white incarceration rates (105.7 persons per 100,000), and 38th in the African American incarceration rate (1000.5 per 100,000).

However, there is an extreme disparity between the white population and black population when it comes to incarceration in Minnesota. In Minnesota, a black person is 9.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than a white person. This is the 6th largest disparity in the United States. Additionally, Minnesota has the 3rd highest incarceration rate for Native Americans (1387.2 persons per 100,000).

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Kari Gloppen, Jon Roesler, Mark Kinde and Melissa Heinen at the Minnesota Department of Health for their guidance, support and trust in me. I would also like to thank Professors Tom Varberg and Liz Jansen, along with Lisa McCarthy and the rest of the Macalester community who helped make this internship possible. This internship would not be possible without gracious funding from Macalester College. Finally, I would like to thank the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Minnesota Department of Corrections, the United States Census Bureau and ESRI for the data.

Data Sources

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (May 1981). Prisoners in 1980. Retrieved From: bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p80.pdf

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (May 1991). Prisoners in 1990. Retrieved From: bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p90.pdf

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (August 2001). Prisoners in 2000. Retrieved From: bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p00.pdf

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (December 2011). Prisoners in 2010. Retrieved From: bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (April 2019). Prisoners in 2017. Retrieved From: bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p17.pdf

Minnesota Department of Corrections. (January 2019). Adult Prison Population Summary AS OF 01/01/2019. Retrieved From: https://mn.gov/doc/assets/Adult%20Prison%20Population%20Summary%201-1-2019_tcm1089-369002.pdf

U.S Census Bureau (May 1983). 1980 Census of Population: General Population Characteristics. Retrieved From: https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1980/1980censusofpopu8011u_bw.pdf

U.S Census Bureau (1992). 1990 Census of Population: General Population Characteristics. Retrieved From: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1990/cp-1/cp-1-1.pdf

U.S Census Bureau (May 2001). Profiles of General Demographic Characteristics: 2000. Retrieved From: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2001/dec/2khus.pdf

U.S Census Bureau (January 2013). Summary Population and Housing Characteristics: 2010. Retrieved From: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2012/dec/cph-1-1.pdf

U.S Census Bureau (June 2019). Annual Estimates of the Resident Population by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin for the United States, States and Counties: April 1 2010 to July 1, 2018. Retrieved From: https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk

References

American Psychological Association. (October 2014). Incarceration Nation. Retrieved From: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/incarceration

Davis, L. M. & Et al. (2011). The Impact of Incarceration on Families: Key Findings. In Understanding the Public Health Implications of Prisoner Reentry in California. pp. 117-142. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.

Hetey, R. C. & Eberhardt, J. L. (2018). The Numbers Don’t Speak for Themselves: Racial Disparities and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Justice System. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27 (3). pp. 183-187. Retrieved From: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963721418763931