{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,10]],"date-time":"2026-08-10T04:31:00Z","timestamp":1786336260510,"version":"build-2736575974"},"reference-count":54,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,10]],"date-time":"2026-08-10T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1786320000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100012554","name":"Hubei Provincial Department of Education","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100012554","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Public Health"],"abstract":"\n Introduction<\/jats:title>\n Most evidence on the criminal legal system as a structural determinant of population mental health concerns police killings and prison incarceration rather than the local jails and pretrial custody through which most criminal-legal contact occurs. We examined whether U.S. counties that rely more heavily on jail confinement and pretrial custody have a higher prevalence of frequent mental distress.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Methods<\/jats:title>\n We linked county-year frequent mental distress estimates from CDC PLACES (2018\u20132023) to jail population, pretrial custody, and jail admissions rates from the Vera Institute, law-enforcement incident rates from the FBI Crime Data Explorer, fatal police shooting rates from the Washington Post, and state-level jail mortality rates from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Ecological associations were estimated with population-weighted least squares models with state and year fixed effects, county-clustered standard errors, and analysis windows matched to each source's coverage.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Results<\/jats:title>\n \n A one-standard-deviation higher jail population rate was associated with 1.17 percentage points higher frequent mental distress (95% CI 0.88 to 1.46;\n n<\/jats:italic>\n = 6, 719). In 2018\u20132019, pretrial custody (\n b<\/jats:italic>\n = 0.40) and jail admissions rates (\n b<\/jats:italic>\n = 0.39) were independently associated with higher distress (\n n<\/jats:italic>\n = 3, 289); law-enforcement incident (\n b<\/jats:italic>\n = 0.47) and fatal police shooting rates (\n b<\/jats:italic>\n = 0.25) showed smaller positive associations. After adjustment for county poverty, median income, racial and ethnic composition, population density, and urbanicity, all coefficients attenuated to near zero (jail population rate\n b<\/jats:italic>\n = 0.06, 95% CI \u22120.03 to 0.15).\n <\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Discussion<\/jats:title>\n Counties that rely heavily on jail and pretrial detention carry a substantially higher community mental-health burden, but that burden is largely inseparable from the socioeconomic disadvantage of the same counties; routine detention practice is best treated as a marker of structurally disadvantaged community environments rather than as an isolated exposure.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpubh.2026.1928427","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,10]],"date-time":"2026-08-10T04:22:30Z","timestamp":1786335750000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Community mental health under routine detention: jail reliance, pretrial custody, and frequent mental distress"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"14","author":[{"given":"Xuanyin","family":"Li","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Criminal Justice, East China University of Political Science and Law","place":["Shanghai, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jinrui","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Research Center for Public Security Governance, Hubei University of Police","place":["Wuhan, Hubei, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,10]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"527","DOI":"10.1146\/annurev-clinpsy-072720-020644","article-title":"Police violence and public health","volume":"18","author":"DeVylder","year":"2022","journal-title":"Annu Rev Clin Psychol"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"5","DOI":"10.1007\/s40471-025-00358-6","article-title":"The US criminal legal system and population health","volume":"12","author":"Cao","year":"2025","journal-title":"Curr Epidemiol Rep"},{"key":"B3","unstructured":"Walmsley\n R\n \n \n World Pre-trial\/Remand Imprisonment List, Fourth Edition\n \n 2020"},{"key":"B4","unstructured":"PLACES: Local Data for Better Health\n \n 2024"},{"key":"B5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"101529","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ssmph.2023.101529","article-title":"Structural racism and health: assessing the mediating role of community mental distress and health care access in the association between mass incarceration and adverse birth outcomes","volume":"24","author":"Larrabee Sonderlund","year":"2023","journal-title":"SSM"},{"key":"B6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"101225","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ssmph.2022.101225","article-title":"A comprehensive framework for operationalizing structural racism in health research: the association between mass incarceration of Black people in the U.S. and adverse birth outcomes","volume":"19","author":"Larrabee Sonderlund","year":"2022","journal-title":"SSM - 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