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The Effects of Traumatic Brain Injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on Prison Adjustment and Recidivism among Military Veterans: Evidence from Minnesota

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Abstract

The prevalence of, and link between, mental health disorders—such as traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—and antisocial behavior is well-documented among the military veteran population. Studies also show that TBI and PTSD account for variation in prison-based and re-entry outcomes. Despite this body of research, comparatively fewer studies have explicitly focused on how these factors affect prison adjustment for inmates with prior military experience. We used administrative data provided by the Minnesota Department of Corrections (MnDOC) and employed a series of survival analyses to examine how prior diagnoses of TBI and PTSD (among other risk factors) influence metrics of institutional adjustment and recidivism among a sample of military veterans. Our results indicate that the effects of TBI, PTSD, and other indicators of criminogenic risk are relevant when examining the experiences of justice-involved military veterans—especially with respect recidivism-based outcomes. The implications of our results are discussed and directions for future research are given.

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Notes

  1. This start date was based on the introduction of the newest version of the Correctional Operations Management System (COMS) used by MnDOC.

  2. Veteran status is based on self-reported military history. Of the 673 who reported having a military history, 51% reported serving in the Army, 14% in the Navy, 12% in the Marines, 6% in the Air Force, <1% in the Coast Guard, and 17% reported another type of military service.

  3. These domains include Criminal History (10 items), Education/Employment (10 items), Financial (2 items), Family/Marital (4 items), Accommodation (3 items), Leisure/Recreation (2 items), Companions (5 items), Alcohol/Drug Problems (9 items), Emotional/Personal (5 items), and Attitudes/Orientation (4 items).

  4. The demographic breakdown of incarcerated veterans in our sample closely mirrors samples analyzed by other scholars, which includes predominately older (~49 years) white (79%) males (98%), the majority of whom are serving time for violent offenses (40.1%) [10].

  5. We considered including a measure of comorbid TBI/PTSD; however, there were only 29 individuals (2% of the sample) with a history of both PTSD and TBI.

  6. Those who were released with no supervision were removed from the analyses predicting supervised release revocation.

  7. Age and education level were measured at two different time points: at admission for the analyses predicting institutional outcomes, and at release for the analyses predicting recidivism.

  8. The longest sentence was 450 months; those serving a life sentence were coded as having a sentence length of 451 months.

  9. These misconduct types were chosen to represent serious non-violent misconduct because MnDOC policy identifies them as risk code violations (RCVs), or violations that create a serious safety and security risk.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA

    Matthew William Logan

  2. Minnesota Department of Corrections, Saint Paul, MN, USA

    Susan McNeeley

  3. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, USA

    Mark Alden Morgan

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  1. Matthew William Logan
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Correspondence to Matthew William Logan.

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Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

The authors did not receive any funding for this research nor are there any conflicts of interest with respect to this manuscript. The data and research materials used here are restricted by Minnesota Department of Corrections (MnDOC).

Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

The data upon which this research is based is restricted administrative data provided by MnDOC. It does not involve human or animal participants. Further, all unique identifiers have been removed from the data to ensure anonymity.

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N/A. See above.

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Logan, M.W., McNeeley, S. & Morgan, M.A. The Effects of Traumatic Brain Injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on Prison Adjustment and Recidivism among Military Veterans: Evidence from Minnesota. Psychiatr Q 92, 1147–1158 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-021-09883-1

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