BOSTON — Higher incarceration rates for Black Americans “significantly increased” the risk of gun violence in those same communities, according to a new Boston University study.
Researchers from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine found that this was not true for white or Hispanic Americans, where “there was no significant impact of incarceration on rates of firearm violence.”
The researchers believe that “the social disorganization from mass incarceration and a higher percentage of single-parent households among Black families may help perpetuate firearm homicides in this population,” the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine said in a statement.
”Among Americans born in the 1990s, 29% of Black individuals can expect to serve a prison sentence compared to 16% of Hispanic individuals and 5% of whites,” study author Dr. Michael Poulson, clinical instructor of surgery at the school, said in a statement.
“This racially disparate mass incarceration preferentially targets Black men, particularly those with less than a high school degree. Our findings reinforce these statistics by showing higher rates of Black incarceration in the city of Chicago when compared to white and Hispanic counterparts,” Poulson said.
The researchers performed a retrospective study reviewing all firearm homicide victims in Chicago, from 2001-2019 “in an effort to understand the mediating effect of social vulnerability and single-parent households on the relationship between incarceration and firearm homicides,” the statement said.
According to the researchers, previous studies that did not use granular data showed that incarceration reduces violence because it takes crime offenders off the street.
However “Our study challenges this assumption by showing that mass incarceration may actually be more detrimental to communities by taking caregivers out of families and disrupting family units, thereby perpetuating violence,” said Poulson, who is also a general surgery resident at Boston Medical Center.
The researchers said they believe this study “ultimately shows that mass incarceration may not have the benefit of reducing crime and may actually worsen crime and violence in already vulnerable communities.”
“Systemic changes in the criminal justice system should be discussed to provide equitable relief to communities that have been hardest hit by mass incarceration and firearm violence for decades,” said Poulson.
These findings appear online in the journal JAMA Surgery.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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