The carceral healthcare system consists of hundreds of disparate institutions with distinct and complex recordkeeping practices that use both electronic and paper health records, public and private funding of health care services, and support varying degrees of access to available medications and treatments. In this fourth session of the Diagnosis of Incarceration speaker series we tackle the challenge of collecting data around health disparities in the U.S. criminal legal system, a realm where data is often deliberately obscured. We will explore how when we are able to capture and interpret carceral health data, it pushes the boundaries of what we know about the impact of incarceration on health, and how system opacity and data manipulation on the part of carceral institutions render the health crisis of their patient populations invisible to public scrutiny and policy intervention. In particular, the COVID pandemic created a small window of transparency through which the world learned of the disproportionate death rates for those in custody and exceptionally disturbing trends in infectious disease exposure and vulnerability. By pairing an examination of innovative research methodologies and data collection strategies such as those created in the midst of the COVID pandemic with investigative human-first journalism practices, we aim to illuminate the urgent need for transparency in counting those who don’t always get counted, or accurately so.
Speakers
Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. She is a national expert in examining how the criminal legal system impacts people, families, and communities. During the pandemic, she co-founded the COVID Prison Project, one of the only national data projects that tracks and analyzes COVID testing, cases, and deaths in prison systems across the country. She utilized the infrastructure of the COVID Prison Project to recently launch the Third City Project—a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded big data project that tracks and aggregates publicly available health and health policy data from carceral systems.
Keri Blakinger is a journalist and the author of the Corrections in Ink, a memoir tracing her path from figure skating to heroin addiction to prison and, finally, to life as an investigative reporter covering mass incarceration. She has written for the Marshall Project, the Houston Chronicle, and her work has appeared in the Washington Post Magazine, VICE, the New York Daily News and The New York Times.
Dr. Ingrid A. Binswanger is a Senior Clinician Investigator at the Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, a Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor of Health Systems Science at the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the health of people who have been involved with the criminal legal system.
Craig Waleed, EdD joined Disability Rights North Carolina in May 2022. He serves as project manager for End Solitary NC project, which is part of the national Unlock the Box Campaign Against Solitary Confinement. Craig is an educator, counselor, certified Restorative Practices group facilitator, author, and motivational speaker. He is dedicated to excellence in teaching, scholarship, and disrupting the community-to-prison pipeline. Craig‘s passion led him to work closely with students on several college campuses and participate in several community panels exploring carceral matters. His autobiography, Prison to Promise: A Chronicle of Healing and Transformation was published in August of 2020.
The Diagnosis of Incarceration speaker series is moderated and organized by Kennedy School MPA Candidate Dr. Cara Muñoz Buchanan, in collaboration with Katy Naples-Mitchell, Program Director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, and Sandra Susan Smith, Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice; Faculty Director, Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management; Director, Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy; Professor of Sociology; and Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute.
Speakers and Presenters
Cara Buchanan, Moderator;
Craig Waleed, Project Manager, End Solitary NC;
Ingrid Binswanger, Senior Clinician Investigator, Institute for Health Research;
Keri Blakinger, Journalist;
Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, Associate Professor, Duke University School of Medicine