In 2016, Marchell Taylor lay in his windowless, six-by-eight cell in the Denver County Jail. Only 36 days after being released after serving time for drug and robbery convictions, he robbed a Papa John’s and assaulted an employee. Because of his record, Mr. Taylor faced 300 years of imprisonment. He asked himself: Why am I back here?
Answering his question may require looking back to 1978, when he was 9 years old and his family’s car slammed into a wall. He woke up to blood on his face. The brain injury he sustained went untreated. Shortly after that, his behavior changed, and he became, in his words, “snappy and violent.” By age 10, he was regularly turning to marijuana and alcohol. At 13, he was breaking into houses. At 14, he robbed a 7-Eleven. In 1993 he was picked up for aggravated robbery and ended up in a maximum security facility. For the next two decades, Mr. Taylor was in and out of institutions like this.
That is until the Brain Injury Alliance of Colorado diagnosed him with a brain injury in 2016 while he was awaiting trial. After administering a screening, psychologists at the Men’s Mental Health Transition Unit — a pioneering mental health program in the Denver County Jail — gave Mr. Taylor access to therapies for mental health, including cognitive behavioral therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, which helps process traumatic memories and experiences. These treatments taught him about his brain, and he says it has made all the difference.
It is tempting to dismiss brain injury at an early age as the cause of years of criminal behavior. It’s certainly true in Mr. Taylor’s case that there were other contributing factors, including ongoing substance abuse, a lack of money and weak social and psychological support. But after spending years researching brain injuries in an effort to understand my own recovery from several and as a friend of Mr. Taylor’s, I’m reckoning with the fact that experts are only now beginning to recognize the connection between brain injury and incarceration. While such trauma may not offer a tidy explanation for histories like his, growing insight into this connection offers an opportunity to change the grim legacy of incarceration and mental illness in this country by treating an underlying factor that can fuel recidivism.
It’s estimated that nearly 45 percent of people who have been involved with the American criminal justice system have a history of brain injury. Some research suggests rates of brain injury among incarcerated women are 5 to 7 percentage points higher than for incarcerated men. And an eight-year study in Flint, Mich., of ninth graders at risk of dropping out of school found that those who had sustained brain injuries in their youth were more likely to engage in violent acts as young adults.
Brain injuries often result in overwhelming feelings of disinhibition, mood swings, overreaction and even acts of rage, which can lead to criminalized behaviors. Survivors of brain injury can struggle with social interaction, skill acquisition, planning and follow-through. This can make it hard to get and maintain employment and housing. (One study in Colorado found that 71 percent of housing-insecure people surveyed reported a history of brain injury.) Brain injuries frequently go unnoticed because they are invisible — unlike, say, a broken leg — and because they often affect people who are themselves unseen. Few Americans are more invisible than those living in prisons and jails. Today the country’s largest mental health facility is not a hospital or asylum. It is part of the Los Angeles County jail system, according to the local sheriff’s department.
A few states are taking meaningful steps to treat the extant effects of brain trauma among incarcerated people. A law passed by Colorado in 2021 — written in part by Mr. Taylor while he was still in prison — requires the state to create a pilot program to offer screenings for brain injury to individuals in the criminal justice system who are about to be sentenced. To carry out the law, Colorado’s Department of Corrections started a program in 2022 at La Vista Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison holding about 560 women. Those who demonstrated a history of brain injury were invited to participate in weekly group sessions focused on teaching coping strategies for memory loss, impulsivity and grief, as well as skills for organization and emotional regulation. In Indiana, where researchers note that people with brain injuries are twice as likely to return to prison within the first year of release, advocates are pushing for brain injury training for probation service personnel.
These efforts should be scaled up nationally. Every state should be required to provide brain injury screenings and treatment for those serving sentences. People in prison who are recovering from brain injuries, especially those that result in disabilities, should be taught about their injuries. They should be invited to participate in programs that target emotional, interpersonal and cognitive skill development — some as basic as learning how to manage court appointments. Therapy models overseen by the Department of Justice, such as trauma therapy by phone for incarcerated survivors of rape, could be expanded to include those suffering from brain injury. Group therapy initiatives like the one at La Vista Correctional Facility could be duplicated elsewhere.
Such measures help not only people in prisons but also the professionals who work with them daily — guards, transitional housing staff members, addiction counselors — all of whom are susceptible to compassion fatigue. And ongoing support during the first few weeks after release from prison, when people are more susceptible to arrest in connection with new crimes, could help reverse the cycle and prevent victimization of others.
In 2017 a judge, persuaded by new research and by Mr. Taylor’s recovery after treatment, issued a 16-year suspended sentence and eight years of mental health probation. As long as Mr. Taylor remains a law-abiding citizen, he will not serve another day in a prison cell. He now works on suicide prevention in Denver. He and his business partner have started Rebuild Your Mind, an initiative that seeks to destigmatize brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder through people’s testimonies.
In this new life, Mr. Taylor is helping to heal others. If the United States is ready to confront the reality that brain injuries can lead to incarceration, he will be far from the only one to make this transformation.
The post Reckoning With the Connection Between Brain Injuries and Criminal Behavior appeared first on New York Times.
