Objectives: People in prison may be at high risk for infectious diseases and have an elevated risk of death immediately after release compared with later; their risk of death is elevated for at least a decade after release. We compared rates, characteristics, and prison-related risk factors for infectious disease-related mortality among people released from prisons in Queensland, Australia, and Washington State, United States, regions with analogous available data.
Methods: We analyzed data from retrospective cohort studies of people released from prison in Queensland (1997-2007, n=37,180) and Washington State (1999-2009, n=76,208) and linked identifiers from each cohort to its respective national death index. We estimated infectious disease-related mortality rates (deaths per person-years in community) and examined associations using Cox proportional hazard models.
Results: The most frequent infectious disease-related underlying cause of death after release from prison was pneumonia (43%, 23/54 deaths) in the Australian cohort and viral hepatitis (40%, 69/171 deaths) in the U.S. cohort. The infectious disease-related mortality rate was significantly higher in the U.S. cohort than in the Australian cohort (51.2 vs. 26.5 deaths per 100,000 person-years; incidence rate ratio = 1.93, 95% confidence interval 1.42, 2.62). In both cohorts, increasing age was strongly associated with mortality from infectious diseases.
Conclusion: Differences in the epidemiology of infectious disease-related mortality among people released from prison may reflect differences in patterns of community health service delivery in each region. These findings highlight the importance of preventing and treating hepatitis C and other infectious diseases during the transition from prison to the community.