Mental Health and Legal Implications of Access to the Outdoors during Incarceration.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review and legal commentary with no original empirical data
PubMed 36627150 · doi:10.29158/JAAPL.220061-22
What was done
The authors examined U.S. correctional policies, mental health literature, and legal case law concerning access to outdoor recreation for incarcerated individuals in jails and prisons.
What was found
The abstract reports no numerical or quantitative findings. The authors observed that U.S. court decisions regarding rights to outdoor access vary widely, resulting in disparate institutional practices (for example, in California, pretrial detainees may be denied outdoor access for years, whereas convicted individuals on death row typically receive weekly outdoor time).
Why it matters
This review highlights how structural correctional policies and fragmented legal precedents affect environmental determinants of mental health among incarcerated populations.
Limits
The paper is a non-systematic narrative and legal review. The abstract provides no primary empirical data, sample size, or quantitative risk estimates.
Cited by
- context Men aged 20 to 30 spend less time outdoors than prison inmates do.