Incarceration has a lasting and robust impact on individuals’ health, social support networks, and general well-being. Yet the role of carceral or personal factors in health outcomes remains unclear, particularly for racial and ethnic minorities. Prisons, with crowded living areas and shared bathroom facilities, invite the spread of infectious diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS. The overwhelming majority of incarcerated individuals will eventually be released back to their communities, bringing with them any health-related issues acquired in prison and beforehand. This makes ex-prisoners’ health a correctional and public health and safety issue. Accordingly, this study seeks to advance our understanding and improve correctional policy by (1) assessing the factors that affect the adverse physical and mental health of returning prisoners, (2) determining how different types of social support (instrumental or emotional) and stress alter the relationship between health and positive reentry outcomes, and (3) examining how health, stress, and social support influence offending and drug use. The broader purpose of this research is to inform correctional policy and practice, engage public health concerns about ex-prisoners, and create a cost-effective model to decrease the stressors related to offender reentry, with the ultimate aim of reducing recidivism. The study includes 802 male ex-prisoners, with an original target sample size of 400 gang and 400 non-gang members identified using disproportionate stratified random sampling techniques. The study was conducted in cooperation with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) in two prisons. Data come from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) funded LoneStar Project and include a battery of survey questions about demographic information, physical and mental health, criminological theoretical constructs, release planning, criminogenic attitudes, and gang membership. The dissertation uses two waves of the LoneStar Project: an in-prison baseline interview, administered a week before release, and an interview administered over the phone at one month post-release. After conducting descriptive analyses, regression modeling will be used to assess the effects of the key independent variables on physical health and later, self-reported offending, net of appropriate controls. Results and relevant policy implications are discussed and should appeal to criminologists, health scholars, policymakers, and practitioners.

Hip-hop’s popularity has been steadily increasing since the late 1980s, with it becoming the most streamed genre of music in 2017. This rise in popularity is matched by an increase in the number of criminal court cases which implement one of hip-hop’s primary features, rap, as evidence. In order to build upon prior research regarding rap music’s implications in legal proceedings and begin to understand what impact this phenomenon might have, this study examines the function of rap music within a sample of court cases. The research was conducted using a qualitative content analysis. The sample consists of 184 criminal cases from a five-year-period selected from the LexisNexis®Academic database. From these cases, 7 principal patterns were established: (1) gang affiliation, (2) descriptions of criminal acts, (3) impermissible character evidence, (4) criminal intent, (5) threats, (6) artistic expression, and (7) inciting incidents. Each of these patterns was examined and analyzed with respect to the function of rap evidence within each case. Among these patterns, the most common was rap evidence bearing gang affiliation, and the least common was rap’s direct use in incidents which resulted in a criminal charge. Most cases, with its use as a threat being the major exception, appeared to implement rap as a supplementary piece of evidence. The analysis demonstrated that the increased usage of rap evidence in the criminal proceedings attests to the significant impact that the hip-hop genre can have a have on individual cases. This impact is defined by the function of rap evidence, and in this sense the contextual and historical significance of rap music becomes a factor in how it is utilized as a tool in the legal system.