I found this story about death rates of released convicts fascinating:

During their first two weeks out of prison, former convicts have a nearly 13 times greater risk of death than the general population, according to a study published today of more than 30,000 former inmates.

I saw that opening paragraph and immediately started conjuring scenarios where either increased risk appetite led to dangerous behavior or forgotten subconscious countermeasures of everyday life, which in turn led to dead ex-cons. Things like bar fights which escalated into shootings or forgetting to look both ways before crossing the street.

I was kind of right.

The leading cause was overdose of illegal narcotics, the researchers found.

Though the study did not look at the reason for the high number of drug overdoses, the researchers surmised that the stress of release and the ex-prisoners’ reduced tolerance to drugs after their sentences were major factors.

“If people have been avoiding drug use and they return to their usual doses after release, they will have lost tolerance,” said lead researcher Dr. Ingrid Binswanger, of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

It’s not just drug overdoses, though. Over the 1.9 years that the 30,237 inmates were tracked:

While 87 percent of ex-prisoners in the study were men, the risk of death for the women was 5.5 times higher than for other women in the state.

Experts said there is no reason the Washington state findings would not apply nationwide.

Over the entire study period, a total of 443 of the people died. Their death rate - adjusted for age, sex and race - was 3.5 times greater than that of the general population.

They died at a higher rate for every major cause of death: 12.2 times the rate for drug overdose compared with the general population, 10.4 times for homicide, 4.7 times for liver disease, 3.4 times for suicide, 3.4 times for motor vehicle accidents, 2.1 times for cardiovascular disease and 1.7 times for cancer.

One thing that isn’t in the story is how much worse ex-con’s do than their non-convict peer groups. Criminals sentenced to prison tend to be poor and minorities. Being poor and a minority also tends to increase the likelihood of poor medical care and substance abuse, so I’m not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg here.

What is significant is that the current prison release process is failing both the ex-con’s in their re-integration into society and society as a whole, since those ex-con’s are persistent consumers of civil services:

[Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University said,] “We are setting than up to fail, both in terms of health outcomes and in terms of recidivism,” he said.

Dr. Scott Chavez, of the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, said the health problems often send ex-inmates to hospital emergency rooms - at taxpayers’ expense - and society gets stuck with other ex-con costs.

Roughly half of them commit a new crime and go back to prison, he said.

Setting people up for failure is a costly way to increase risk for everyone in our society. The programs which might mitigate that risk may seem costly, but compared to the costs that would be avoided if even a small portion of ex-inmates were helped would produce a significant net benefit, both to society and to those people who now might become net contributors to society.

“One thing that isn’t in the story is how much worse ex-con’s do than their non-convict peer groups. ”

Peer groups along what dimensions?

According to your quote from the article:

“Their death rate - adjusted for age, sex and race - was 3.5 times greater than that of the general population.” (Emphasis mine)

Two “obvious” items I’d like to see thrown in are employment status and income. The hypothesis is that among those who make good $$ after release, the mortality difference will be smallest.

Chris,

You pretty much nailed it.

I agree with your hypothesis, but didn’t have the time to do any research to see if anyone has examined mortality rates against educational level and/or post-release income.