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. 2021 Dec 21:8:100150.
doi: 10.1016/j.lana.2021.100150. eCollection 2022 Apr.

Community investment interventions as a means for decarceration: A scoping review

L Hawks  1   2 , E Lopoo  3 , L Puglisi  4   5 , J Cellini  6 , K Thompson  4   7 , A A Halberstam  8 , D Tolliver  4   7 , S Martinez-Hamilton  8 , E A Wang  4   5
Affiliations

Community investment interventions as a means for decarceration: A scoping review

L Hawks et al. Lancet Reg Health Am. .

Abstract

There is growing support to reverse mass incarceration in the United States, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Little is known about what types and scale of community investments are most effective to support mass decarceration. Using a public health prevention framework, we conducted a scoping review to examine community-based programs that reduced criminal legal involvement. We searched PubMed, Embase and three EBSCO databases from 1990 through September 2019 for all experimental or quasi-experimental studies testing interventions pertaining to education, housing, healthcare, employment, or social support services and how they affected an individual's criminal legal outcomes. Our review identified 53 studies that demonstrated the efficacy of early childhood educational interventions and nurse-family partnership programs, post-secondary education for incarcerated students, navigation programs linking incarcerated people to community resources, and peer support upon release to reduce criminal legal system exposure. In concert with legislative action to end mass incarceration, additional research is needed to test interventions designed to achieve mass decarceration which cross multiple domains, interrogate community-level impacts and ascertain long-term outcomes.

Keywords: United States; incarceration; preventive medicine; public health; structural racism.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no competing interests to disclose.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Prisma flow diagram of study selection.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Reducing criminal legal involvement over the life course: a summary of effective interventions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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