Background: To examine the relationship between incarceration history and an individual's compliance toward COVID-19 mitigation strategies and vaccination status/intentions.
Method: Data are from the Crime, Health, and Politics Survey (N = 1,735), a national probability sample of community-dwelling adults aged 18 and above living in the United States. Data were collected from May 10, 2021 to June 1, 2021. Multinomial logistic regression models were used to assess the relationship between incarceration history and COVID-19 mitigation strategies and vaccination status/intentions.
Results: Individuals with a history of incarceration reported approximately twice the relative risk of rarely/never using hand sanitizer and rarely/never wearing a mask compared with always/very often. Incarceration history was associated with more than 3 times greater relative risk of reporting not being vaccinated and not planning to get vaccinated compared with currently being vaccinated.
Conclusion: Formerly incarcerated individuals are less likely to abide by key COVID-19 mitigation protocols and exhibit higher levels of vaccine hesitancy. These findings suggest that formerly incarcerated individuals, as well as their families and communities, may therefore be at greater risk of accelerated spread of COVID-19 because of these factors.
Keywords: COVID-19; criminal justice; incarceration; vaccination.