JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Epidemiological criminology refers to health issues affecting incarcerated and non-incarcerated offender populations, a group recognized as being challenging to conduct research with. Notwithstanding this, an urgent need exists for new knowledge and interventions to improve heath, justice, and social outcomes for this marginalised population.

Objective:

To better understand research outputs in epidemiological criminology research we examined the lead author’s affiliation by analysing peer reviewed published outputs to determine countries and organizations (e.g., universities, government, non-government organisations) responsible for peer reviewed publications.

Methods:

We used a semi-automatic approach to examine the first author affiliations of 23,904 PubMed epidemiological studies in English related to incarcerated and offender populations published between 1946 and 2021. We also mapped research outputs to the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index to better understand whether there was a relationship between research outputs and the overall standard of a country’s justice systems.

Results:

Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark) had the highest research outputs proportional to their incarcerated population followed by Australia. University affiliated first authors comprised 73.3% of published articles, with the Karolinska Institute (Sweden) the most published, followed by the University of New South Wales (Australia). Government affiliated first authors were on 10% of published outputs, and prison-affiliated groups 1%. Countries with the lowest research outputs also had the lowest scores on the Rule of Law Index.

Conclusions:

This study provides important information on who is publishing research in the epidemiological criminology area. This has implications for promoting research diversity, independence, funding equity, and partnerships between universities and government departments that control access to incarcerated and offending populations.