Mental Health and the Justice System (2024-2025)
This continuing team is examining how mental illness, substance use disorders and social factors intersect with incarceration in Durham County. Using a multiyear dataset that combines jail booking records from the Durham County Detention Facility with Duke Health records from 2014 through 2023, the team is investigating the medical needs, service utilization and reentry outcomes of more than 23,000 individuals. Their work aims to guide criminal justice and health system stakeholders in developing more effective, cost-efficient interventions for people who cycle between jail and medical care.
This year, the team completed both quantitative and qualitative projects. On the quantitative side, they cleaned and verified newly received jail and health data through 2023 and conducted statistical modeling of factors associated with repeated incarcerations. Findings showed that individual-level characteristics such as race, sex and mental illness, as well as neighborhood-level factors like poverty, police precinct presence and historical redlining, were strongly linked to repeat bookings. These results reinforce prior research suggesting that both personal and structural factors contribute to patterns of incarceration and highlight potential areas for targeted reforms.
Qualitative research included focus groups with formerly incarcerated individuals and interviews with family members of people who had been incarcerated. Participants emphasized that while some jail-based programs are effective, the jail environment itself undermines recovery, and peer supporters are crucial in promoting positive outcomes. Family members described experiencing stigma, financial and emotional stress, and what researchers called “secondary prisonization” during prison visits. These findings underscore the importance of peer-led recovery services, coordinated reentry support and broader recognition of the toll incarceration takes on families. Together, the projects provide actionable insights for justice and health agencies in Durham and beyond.
Timing
Summer 2024 – Spring 2025
Team Outputs
Mental Health and the Justice System in Durham County (Poster presentation at the Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase, April 16, 2025)
Student theses in preparation for publication
See related Data+ summer project, Mental Health and the Justice System in Durham County (2024), and earlier related team, Mental Health and the Justice System in Durham County (2023-2024).
Image: Bare Tree/Durham, by Nathan Walls, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0