Center for Health and Justice Transformation

The Center for Health and Justice Transformation (CHJT) is a project of the Community Health Institute.

Justice for All

CHJT is dedicated to advancing improved outcomes through fair access to health care in the criminal legal system. Learn more from the founders, as well as past and current staff members, about the organization's evolution since 2005. Watch the video.

The Issues

People incarcerated in jails and prisons suffer higher rates of chronic medical conditions and behavioral health issues than the general population. They are disproportionately from underserved communities facing persistent barriers and largely come from communities where residents already report overall poor health and lack of access to care. The disparities we see in our health care system are mirrored in our criminal justice system.

At CHJT, we work to shift the response to complex social and behavioral issues, such as poverty, mental health needs, housing instability, and substance use, away from criminalization and toward systems of care and community support. This means promoting approaches that recognize these challenges as public health concerns and advocating for investments in services that foster safety, stability, and wellbeing instead of punitive interventions.

Statewide Criminal and Justice Planning

Experts agree that criminal justice planning should be a governmental function outside of correctional agencies and, in jurisdictions where this is not possible, local government should support and empower criminal justice planners to lead such work on behalf of the state.

Workers wearing hard hats in a manufacturing center

Reentry

Effective reentry requires state, local, and community agencies to ask themselves and each other how we can work together to transition people home and keep them home.

Since 2005, we've been at the center of innovative correctional health research and programming.

Contact Us

Please use our online form, visit us, or email us for more information or for help related to our initiatives.

Email: [email protected]

Address:

167 Point St, Suite 1A
Providence, RI 02903

By the Numbers

Pill bottles and medications in a bathroom cabinet

Drug Dependence

58 percent of people in prisons and 63 percent of people serving a jail sentence meet the criteria for drug dependence, as compared to 4 percent of the general adult populaton.
One in five people incarcerated in state prisons have a history of injection drug use.
Among those in prison who have a serious mental illness, over 70 percent also have a co-occurring substance abuse disorder; in the general population, the corresponding percentage is about 25 percent.
Almost half a million people are currently incarcerated in America because of a drug offense.

Adult speaking with a mental health counselor

Mental Health Issues

37 percent of people in prisons report having been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, along with 44 percent of people in jails.
Incarcerated individuals in the US are three to five times more likely to have a significant mental health issue than the general population.
There are more people with serious mental health disorders in Chicago's Cook County Jail, New York's Riker's Island, or the Los Angeles County Jail than there are people in any single Psychiatric hospital in the nation.

Empty cafeteria inside a correctional facility

Mass US Criminalization

The US comprises five percent of the world population but holds a quarter of the world's prisoners.
2.3 million people in the United States are currently incarcerated in prisons while an additional 4.4 million people are supervised by probation or parole.
10.6 million people cycle in and out of jail each year in the United States.
Black Americans are over five times more likely to be incarcerated than white Americans. One in ten black men in his 30s is incarcerated on an given day.
77 million Americans have a criminal record.