Years of life lost to prison: racial and gender gradients in the United States of America

Robert S Hogg¹^,2^,3 , Eric F Druyts² , Scott Burris⁵ , Ernest Drucker⁴ and Steffanie A Strathdee²^,3

¹Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

²British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, St. Paul's Hospital, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

³Division of International Health and Cross Cultural Medicine, San Diego School of Medicine, University of California, California, USA

⁴Montefiore Medical Center, New York, New York, USA

⁵Beasley School of Law, Temple University, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA

author email corresponding author email

Harm Reduction Journal 2008, 5:4doi:10.1186/1477-7517-5-4


Published:	25 January 2008

Abstract

Background

The United States has the highest rate of imprisonment of any country in the world. African Americans and Hispanics comprise a disproportionately large share of the prison population. We applied a "prison life expectancy" to specify differences in exposure to imprisonment by gender and race at the population level.

Methods

The impact of imprisonment on life expectancy in the United States was measured for each year from 2000 to 2004, and then averaged. Using the Sullivan method, prison and prison-free life expectancies were estimated by dividing the years lived in each age range of the life table into these two states using prevalence of imprisonment by gender and race.

Results

African American males can expect to spend on average 3.09 years in prison or jail over their lifetime and Hispanic and Caucasian males can spend on average 1.06 and 0.50 years, respectively. African American females, on the other hand, can expect to spend on average 0.23 years in these institutions and Hispanic and Caucasian females can expect to spend on average 0.09 and 0.05 years, respectively. Overall, African American males, the highest risk group, can expect to spend on average 61.80 times longer in prison or jail as compared to Caucasian women, the lowest risk group.

Conclusion

There are clear gender and racial gradients in life expectancy spent in prison in the United States. Future research needs to examine how current imprisonment practice in the United States may influence population health and health disparities.