Trend Mass incarceration becomes a primary engine of global health inequality for men

Summary

GWI's Men's Wellbeing Initiative argues that mass incarceration has become a leading driver of global health inequality rather than only a legal matter. About 11.5 million people are imprisoned worldwide, and roughly 93% of them are men. Prisons act as amplifiers of infectious disease, which later spreads back into the wider population. In Latin America prison tuberculosis notification rates run nearly 29 times community rates, and many cases appear only after release. Men also face sharply higher death and overdose risks in the weeks after leaving prison. The Initiative adds that mega-prisons and expanding immigration detention, holding mostly men, deepen a crisis that receives little monitoring.