A pair of words characteristically not often found in the same sentence is the science of astrobiology and incarceration. The following comments about both realms is predicated on the assumption that the health status of individuals confined to the nation’s jails and prisons is mostly hidden from general view. Although social debates rage over issues regarding whether punishments that result in incarceration are either too excessive or not harsh enough, a proposition is advanced that insufficient attention tends to be paid to the physical and mental health of the imprisoned subset of the population.
Increases in the older inmate cohort in prisons are attributable in part to a growth in the number of first-time aging offenders, elimination of parole, increased sentence lengths that include life terms, and mandatory minimum sentencing. Moreover, older prisoners require different levels of care due to increased physical and mental comorbidity burden. Compared with their younger counterparts, older incarcerated patients reflect high rates of diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular conditions, and liver disease. Cardiovascular disease is significant because it is a leading cause of death among prisoners. Mental health problems also are common, especially anxiety, fear of death or suicide, and depression. A related concern is that correctional health care, whether provided by the government or the private sector, may not be subject to the same quality standards as the general health care system. Another important consideration is that many prisoners enter the correctional system with pre-existing physical and mental health problems.
According to a paper in the November 2021 issue of the journal Astrobiology, introducing educational programs into prisons has been shown to be beneficial not only for the richness of opportunities offered to prisoners, but also in efforts to reduce crime. An approach to prison education is to ask the question: what features of the prison environment give its inhabitants experience and knowledge that are unique to them and not experienced by members of the non-incarcerated population? If such aspects can be identified, then an opportunity may exist to allow prisoners to use that experience to contribute new ideas to society. Of some interest is that prisons bear similarities to planetary sites in remote locations that include relative isolation and confinement of the enclosed population compared to the external population, where limited interactions occur with participants in the larger outside world. Hence, the incarcerated possibly could be in somewhat of an advantageous position to have a deep intuitive understanding of the challenges of existing in a small relatively isolated population.
An endeavor in Scotland called the Life Beyond project involves the prison population in designing settlements for the planetary bodies Moon and Mars. Apart from improving educational opportunities in prisons, this initiative demonstrates the potential for prisoners to contribute to space settlement by applying their experience of the prison space analog environment. A conspicuous development is how the project rapidly expanded beyond the objective of science and engineering into creative writing, art, music, political philosophy, and other disciplines.