Erin Eife, Assistant Professor, Criminology, Law and Society, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), received funding for the project: “Surveillance as a Social Determinant of Health: Understanding the Impact of Pending Charges on Health Outcomes.”
Eife will conduct this research under the advisement of Evan Lowder, Associate Professor, Criminology, Law and Society, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS), and Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke University.
Eife aims to produce knowledge about the relationships among pending charges, one’s likelihood to feel anxious, and one’s likelihood of using illicit substances.
In the age of major bond reform, this study is timely. Specifically, there has been a decrease in pretrial incarceration but a suspected increase in other forms of pretrial surveillance, and this study seeks to demonstrate that alternatives to pretrial incarceration, such as electronic monitoring and drug testing, are similarly harmful to people with criminal legal (CL) contact. Documenting the relationships among pending charges, anxiety, and substance use may help to expose some of the ways that the community surveillance perpetuated by well-intentioned bond reform can actually reproduce the outcomes that it seeks to eradicate.
Eife will serve as Principal Investigator of the proposed study.
The scope of work for George Mason will include: (1) serving as the prime institution for the study; (2) leading the development of the study’s two aims; (3) coordinating data cleaning and analysis; and (4) leading dissemination of scientific findings of the study.
Eife received $16,200 from The Miriam Hospital on a subaward from the National Institutes of Health for this project. Funding began in Oct. 2024 and will end in late Dec. 2024.
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