Spatial Determinants of Post-Conviction Health

Brielle Bryan, Rice University

April 25, 2025, Friday. 12:00 – 1:00PM

RSVP HERE

Join us EITHER in person on the Texas A&M University Campus, College Station, TX in Teague 326 or on Zoom (link provided after registration).

 Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees.

Seminar Abstract:

The aftermath of criminal justice involvement extends beyond the confines of incarceration, influencing long-term health and wellbeing. The widespread and legally sanctioned practice of housing discrimination against individuals with criminal records through tenant screening practices potentially filters them to neighborhoods with harmful health implications. The quality of residential environments—defined by varying levels of exposure to hazards and access to health-promoting resources—plays a critical role in shaping health outcomes, underscoring the need to examine spatial determinants of health among formerly incarcerated individuals and those with felony convictions. We link spatial data capturing multiple dimensions of exposure and access to restricted-use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to analyze the degree to which incarceration spells and felony convictions shape place and health outcomes for individuals with these forms of criminal justice contact. We use individual fixed effects models, and a host of covariates related to selection into both neighborhood type and criminal justice contact to estimate how conviction and incarceration relate to changes in neighborhood-based exposures and access consequential to health. We further examine how these relationships differ by race-ethnicity, homeownership status, and parental status.

BIO

Brielle Bryan received her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University and her MPP from Georgetown University.

Her research examines inequality and barriers to opportunity in the United States, with an emphasis on racial inequities and the role of the criminal justice system. Her current projects examine how incarceration and felony conviction shape housing experiences, financial inclusion, wealth, interaction with the social safety net, and economic stability over the life course. She is also engaged in research terms investigating the consequences of fair chance housing policies and cross-national indigenous versus white disparities in child welfare system contact. Dr. Bryan is a 2021 Russell Sage Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Pipeline Grantee and a proud member of the Osage Nation. Her work has been honored by the American Sociological Association and the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and has been published in Social Forces, Demography, Criminology, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Social Science Research, and The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.