Theses Doctoral

Managing Marginality: Jails, Health, and Inequality

Ittner, Timothy

Jails play a unique role in the criminal legal system, incarcerating people who are awaiting trial or serving short sentences of less than a year. At midyear 2023, jails incarcerated 664,200 people and admitted 7.6 million people in the preceding 12 months (Zeng 2024). People incarcerated in jail often face several co-occurring hardships, including housing instability, untreated mental illness, and substance use problems, which jails can exacerbate. This dissertation argues jails create and respond to many of these problems associated with poverty, especially problems related to the health of incarcerated people.

Across three papers, I demonstrate jails (1) were used as a punitive response to the prescription opioid crisis, especially in rural communities; (2) became a highly infectious environment in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic after failing to enforce many basic preventative measures like masking and social distancing, threatening the health of incarcerated people; and (3) readmit people with mental illness and substance use problems at much higher rates than people in good health. Taken together, these papers demonstrate the complex relationship between jails on the one hand and the health of incarcerated people and the public on the other.

Geographic Areas

Files

This item is currently under embargo. It will be available starting 2027-01-08.

More About This Work

Academic Units
Sociology
Thesis Advisors
Western, Bruce P.
Degree
Ph.D., Columbia University
Published Here
January 15, 2025