In a large sample of ex-prisoners in Queensland, Australia, the aims of the current study were to (1) estimate the prevalence of PCP contact within 1 month of release, and (2) determine the association between PCP contact in the first month postrelease and utilisation of mental health, AOD, hospital and subsequent PCP services in the first 6 months postrelease.
We rely on data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) evaluation and employ cross-lagged panel models to examine short-term changes in substance use and crime over time among a large sample of high-risk, former prisoners (N = 1697).
15 20 To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the association between early PCP contact and health service utilisation in a large sample of recently released ex-prisoners.
To better inform re-entry programming for young people, in this study we describe the prevalence and co-occurrence of health-related needs in a large sample of young, soon-to-be released prisoners.
We believe that the strengths of this study are i) its prospective nature; ii) the use of a standardised diagnostic procedure, not just a screening approach, to establish the presence or absence of a PD; iii) the large sample size of prisoners and cases with PD (n = 236 and n = 129, respectively); iv) the multicentre nature of the study (25 prisons) which supports the validity of our results.
It examined a large sample of corporations.
Our ability to compare the diets of the prisoners to that of local residents as a means of placing the prison rations in context was limited to just a few guards and in this regard, a larger sample of non-prisoners would have been beneficial.
The sample of prisoners comprised only men, whereas 26 of the LTU (37.9%) were women.
The study was conducted in a sample of prisoners, many with a history of IDU, and thus with a high the prevalence of PD (72.5 %).
Adherence to STI and BBV testing policy was evaluated among a sample of prisoners admitted after 1st January 2005, and discharged between 1st January 2007 and 31st December 2007 inclusive.
