PROJECT SUMMARY:
Mass incarceration - a system of social and racial control that affects those with criminal justice (CJ) contact and
entire communities where it is concentrated - is a public health crisis. Incarceration worsens mental health (MH)
and contributes to MH disparities across the life course given incarceration’s disproportionate impact on Black,
low-income, and rural communities. Incarceration also has individual and community MH effects. Recognizing
the negative health effects of incarceration, probation has been lauded as an alternative. In fact, 3.6 million
individuals in the United States (US) are on probation, far more than the number incarcerated. Yet, it remains
unclear what the effect of probation is on health, including MH. Because probation is so common and seen as
an alternative to incarceration, it is essential to know if the deleterious effects of probation mirror those of
incarceration.
The objectives of this proposal are to (1) characterize longitudinal patterns of CJ involvement from adolescence
to midlife by race, (2) evaluate the relationship between probation and MH and racial disparities in this
relationship, and (3) evaluate temporal and geographic trends in the relationship between probation, race, and
MH at the county level. For the first two objectives, to assess individual effects, The National Longitudinal Study
of Youth97 will be used, which is a longitudinal, nationally representative data set of adolescents born from 1980-
1984 with data from adolescence through midlife. For the third objective, to assess community effects, North
Carolina administrative data on probation, self-inflicted injury, and suicide will be used. The completion of the
proposed aims will significantly advance our understanding of the relationship between CJ and health and has
the potential to inform probation policies, provide valuable insights on probation’s community-wide effects, and
inform interventions to improve MH among this often-forgotten population.
The training plan outlined in this proposal will equip the applicant, Katherine LeMasters, with critical knowledge
in mass incarceration and health disparities and with necessary skills in social and spatial epidemiology and in
large population-based data and administrative data use. This plan will prepare her to successfully complete the
proposed aims and to progress into a role as an independent, interdisciplinary researcher researching the
intersection of mass incarceration and health equity in the US. The applicant is incredibly well supported by
an interdisciplinary group of CJ researchers, epidemiologists, health disparities researchers, and health
geographers with the requisite expertise to support her doctoral research and prepare her for the next phase of
her career.