The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences on March 2 announced the opening of a new Public Health and Criminal Justice Research Center focusing on the mental health issues and drug addiction in the Pulaski County criminal justice system.
According to program director and UAMS professor Nick Zaller, the program will collect information from people in the system to analyze the exact effects of mental illness and drug addiction on them and how best to help them with addiction issues.
"It really centers around this idea of looking at mass incarceration and criminal justice involvement through more of a public health lens and public health perspective," Zaller said. "Why do that? Because the real surge in incarceration has come really as a direct result of folks with substance abuse disorders and mental illness."
The upward trend of incarcerations in the United States that started years ago, according to Zaller, can in part be attributed to many people with medical conditions.
"For decades actually, we've seen this upward trajectory in terms of growth in incarceration rates, people churning through the system, particularly in county jails, and really again it's folks who have chronic medical conditions who are going through the system," Zaller said.
Zaller said the research center is targeted at the South because of the high incarceration rates in the region.
"The South is really the epicenter for mass incarceration in the United States," Zaller said. "We see different reforms happening in different pockets of the country, but a lot of times the resources are limited here in the South."
According to Zaller, experts from outside the South have given suggestions about changes for the criminal justice system, but the suggestions do not get adopted because of a lack of "local, contextual understanding."
In January, Advance Pretrial Policy Research selected Pulaski County to be a research-action site to improve results from the pretrial system by prioritizing resident safety, reducing discrimination based on wealth or race and only incarcerating those who threaten public safety.
Zaller was selected as a UAMS representative to be part of that committee, but he said while the two are related, the UAMS Research Center is not a part of the initiative.
However, Zaller hopes the center will inform officials in Arkansas about things that have worked and potential solutions for public health issues in prisons and jails.
"We have a lot of things that work in other places," Zaller said. "The crisis stabilization unit is one of those places. That's one small strategy to reduce folks coming to the jail."
According to Zaller, much of the work will be studying these issues to see how severe the problem is.
"If we don't know the problem, how are we going to solve it?" Zaller said. "Nobody can answer a simple question: How many people do we have incarcerated today who have a mental illness? We have no idea."
Some people in Central Arkansas who work with the incarcerated have some idea of how severe the problem is.
Leta Anthony with the Central Arkansas ReEntry Coalition said those who are incarcerated have a higher potential to develop mental illnesses, estimating possibly half have some mental illness or drug abuse issues.
"If you didn't have mental illness before being incarcerated, certainly you're going to have it when you get out," Anthony said. "One of the criminal justice issues is we treat issues of mental health as if they are criminal justice issues."
Anthony said many of those in the system commit crimes in part to deal with addiction and mental illness.
"People who have mental health issues usually are people who get caught up in drug addiction and that can elevate to theft or other crimes as they try to feed or deal with the self-remedy of their mental illness."
Zachary Crow, executive director of decARcerate, said some of the practices in prisons such as solitary confinement impacts those who go through it.
"Mentally ill folks are disproportionately impacted by prisons' use of solitary," Crow said. "We're looking at all of these things when it comes to policy work."
Zaller said the problem affects not just those who are incarcerated but has adverse effects on many Arkansans throughout the state.
"I think a lot of people don't necessarily really realize how much of an impact this has on our state," Zaller said. "If you look at the sheer numbers of people not just in prisons and jails but the tens of thousands of Arkansans who are actually under community supervision."