Predictive Analytics and the Future of Jail Health Care

From my inbox to yours!

Dear Colleague:

From its inception, Community Oriented Correctional Health Services (COCHS) has viewed connectivity not only as a way to link justice-involved people to services but also as a way to link people in the criminal justice and health care sectors to information.

COCHS CIO Ben Butler is an expert on the myriad issues involved in creating information connectivity between criminal justice and health care. With the rise of big data come new opportunities for magnifying the power of information technology. In a new issue paper, Predictive Analytics in Criminal Justice and Health Care: Three Case Studies, Ben examines how health care providers are working with criminal justice providers to use predictive analytics for reducing incarceration, improving health, and maintaining public safety. Although this work is still in its early stages, the kinds of initiatives discussed in Ben’s paper will no doubt someday be the norm.

Meanwhile, Health Affairs, the nation’s leading health policy journal, recently published Ben’s letter suggesting that jails offer an interesting opportunity to test the efficacy of health information exchange (HIE) for improving the health of a very vulnerable population.

As you know, COCHS has widely disseminated the message that significant numbers of people in jail are there because of untreated behavioral health problems. When these problems continue to go untreated in jail, they can lead to behavior that causes inmates to wind up in solitary confinement, where conditions are even more detrimental to mental health issues.

Last week, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote an important concurring opinion for Davis v. Ayala, in which he noted the “human toll wrought by extended terms of isolation” and the inadequacy of current judicial mechanisms for determining the role of solitary confinement in inmate sentencing. Citing COCHS collaborator Dr. Homer Venters, Justice Kennedy wrote that recent research detailing the psychological toll of confinement on inmates challenges us to re-examine the way we view punishment.

With his concurrence, Justice Kennedy has opened the door for the Supreme Court to examine the conditions of confinement and the effects of these conditions on inmates’ mental health. Justice Kennedy foresees a time when the judiciary will “determine whether workable alternative systems for long-term confinement exist, and, if so, whether a correctional system should be required to adopt them.”

With your help, we have brought these alternative systems closer to becoming a reality.

Steven Rosenberg

President, COCHS

Congratulations to Kings County Probation!

CA Attorney General Recognizes Kings County Probation Department for Juvenile Reentry Efforts

California Attorney General Kamala Harris (pictured left) recently awarded the Kings County (CA) Probation Department with a Recidivism Reduction Certificate of Commendation for its work with youth. The department, which is in the process of developing a comprehensive reentry strategic plan aimed at reducing recidivism for youth committed to the county juvenile detention center, received a Second Chance Act Juvenile Reentry Systems Reform planning grant through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in 2014.

The Other Prison Health Crisis

Hepatitis C is common behind bars, but sick prisoners aren’t getting treatment.

LAUREN KIRCHNER

…..”By not assuming the financial cost of treatment, defendants are imposing a human cost on the prisoners as well as on the population which will be at risk when these prisoners will be released.”

Hepatitis C is a persistent problem in prisons. The virus is spread most frequently through shared drug syringes and unsafe tattooing methods. If left untreated, it can lead to liver failure and death. Recent figures suggest that about two percent of the American population suffers from hepatitis C, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in three incarcerated people have it. (Figures are fuzzy, however, which is part of the problem.)

Last week, prisoner advocacy groups filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in Boston, accusing the Massachusetts Department of Correction of denying medical treatment to inmates infected with hepatitis C. Despite the fact that it’s contagious, potentially deadly, and has recently become easily treatable, the suit alleges, only three of the approximately 1,500 state prisoners infected with the disease are currently being treated for it.

Safe Alternatives to Segregation (SAS) initiative

VERA Selects five Corrections Departments for initiative aimed at reducing the use of solitary confinement.

Mar 24 2015

NEW YORK – The Vera Institute of Justice announced today that it has selected five state and local corrections departments to participate in its Safe Alternatives to Segregation (SAS) initiative aimed at reducing their use of solitary confinement and other forms of segregated prisoner housing. The state corrections departments in Nebraska, Oregon, and North Carolina, and local departments in New York City and Middlesex County, New Jersey were chosen after a competitive bidding process.

The purpose of segregated housing is to isolate inmates deemed threats to the safety and security of facilities. But over the past three decades, departments of corrections have increasingly used it to punish disruptive but nonviolent behavior, protect vulnerable inmates, or temporarily house inmates awaiting the completion of a facility transfer. Individuals are held in segregation for days, years, and in some instances, decades.

A growing body of evidence suggests that segregation is counterproductive to facility and public safety. According to

NY Times Op Ed piece, My Night in Solitary, click the inmate to read.

one report, nearly every study of segregation’s effects conducted over the past 150 years has concluded that subjecting an individual to more than 10 days of involuntary segregation negatively impacts his or her emotional, cognitive, social, and physical well-being. Segregation is also expensive, as isolated housing can cost tens of thousands of dollars more per inmate than general population housing. READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE