Mental Illness, Substance Use, and Co-Occurring Disorders among Jail Inmates: Prevalence, Recidivism, and Gender Differences

ABSTRACT

Mental illnesses, substance use, and their co-occurrence are significant predictors of maladaptive outcomes such as aggression, criminal behavior, and recidivism. These problems are theorized to be more prevalent and problematic among female inmates than male inmates and may be more relevant in jail settings. However, few studies have examined the relationship between these factors, including gender differences among the jail population. This study seeks to fill these gaps by examining – a) the prevalence of these problems, b) their effects on recidivism, and c) gender differences in these relationships – among jail inmates. Results indicate that mental illness significantly increased recidivism for men and its impact on recidivism was stronger for males than females, and mental illness primarily occurred in the presence of substance use. Finally, although substance use was very high among males and females, it was not significantly related to recidivism for either group. In order to offer programming for these problems, administrators should first implement the use of needs assessments which would identify at-risk inmates.

KEYWORDS:

• Mental health
• mental illness
• substance use
• co-occurring disorder
• recidivism
• jail inmates
• gender differences

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The authors declare that a waiver from the Internal Review Board for University of Nebraska was received to proceed with this study. This is a secondary de-identified dataset and has no individual identity markers. No humans have been directly approached or studied for the purpose of this study.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets during and/or analysed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contributions

Author 1 collected data, ran the analyses, and drafted sections of the paper. Author 2 drafted the literature review and discussion, supervised overall writing, supervised methods and statistical analyses. Author 3 oversaw the analyses.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. For the current study, mental illness and substance use are considered as two separate disorders and their co-morbidity is defined as co-occurring disorders (CODs).

2. Unfortunately, we were unable to determine the reason (e.g., probation violation or new offense) for their return to jail.

3. No other sex categories were collected by the jail.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.