Public Health and the Epidemic of Incarceration

  • February 10, 2023
  • 12:00 PM - 1:30 CST
  • Grace Pyatt, health-law@luc.edu
  • Open to the public.
  • https://reg.planetreg.com/E826101848133770
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  • Details

    This panel engages participants in a critical intersectional analysis of legal causes and responses to mass incarceration. Criminalized Black women and girls experience significant health harms and a myriad of structural, community, and interpersonal barriers, yet there remains an under-examination of the inequities they face coupled with targeted interventions and reforms. Utilizing a continuum-based framework of mass incarceration as a health-harming system, panelists will expose how laws, policies, and practices before, during, and after confinement compound racialized and gendered health vulnerabilities, risks, and outcomes. Panelists will draw on research centering the experiences of Black women and girls in such areas as: 1) disparities in social-structural pathways that drive entry into the carceral system, 2) lack of gender-responsive health care during confinement, 3) educational barriers during and following release, and 4) qualitative analysis of formerly incarcerated Black women's experiences with health and reentry. To promote systems-level change, participants will discuss how public health and health law professors can engage to elevate the importance of more robust and intersectional public health law interventions within the larger carceral reform movement.