Substance Use Among Rural Adolescents with Incarcerated Parents
Over the last 5 decades, incarceration rates in the US have risen 500% with nearly 2 million people in jails and prisons - a large majority of those people are parents. As incarceration rates are highest in rural communities, rural children are disproportionately exposed to parental incarceration. Substance use is a pressing public health issue, and a key driver of incarceration, particularly in rural areas, yet limited research has examined parental incarceration as a social determinant of health for adolescent alcohol and drug use.
In general, rural adolescents report higher rates of substance use than their urban peers, but in the recently published Substance Use Among Rural Adolescents with Incarcerated Parents: Evidence from a State-Wide Sample, HYD-PRC Director Rebecca Shlafer, former DOGPAH post-doctoral fellow Luke Muentner, and colleagues showed that adolescents who experience parental incarceration are in fact at an even higher risk for substance use.
Using data from the 2019 Minnesota Student Survey, the study found that over 22% of rural adolescents have experienced parental incarceration. Those who had a parent incarcerated in the past or had a parent incarcerated at the time of the survey reported greater past-year alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine use compared to peers who had never experienced parental incarceration.
“The bulk of research on child health in the context of parental incarceration has largely relied on urban samples,” says Shlafer. “With this new study, we were able to focus specifically on rural adolescents and determined that parental incarceration puts rural adolescents at the highest risk for substance use. Rural youth already face severe health inequities and having a parent incarcerated only contributes more.”
Shlafer and colleagues note the need for expanded prevention and intervention strategies that support adolescent health. “There is a need for expanded mental, behavioral, and physical health services for youth with an incarcerated parent,” says Shlafer. “Targeted decarceration efforts in rural communities aimed at reducing the number of families experiencing parental incarceration is also essential for reducing rural adolescent substance use.”
Substance use among rural adolescents with incarcerated parents: Evidence from a state-wide sample