A new discourse at the intersection of criminal justice and public health is bringing to light how exposure to the ordinariness of racism in the criminal legal system—whether in policing practices or carceral settings—leads to extraordinary outcomes in health. Drawing on empirical evidence of the deleterious health effects of system involvement coupled with new threats posed by COVID-19, advocates and academics have increasingly called for race-conscious public health-driven reforms to carcerality in the United States. Recognizing the significance of health to carceral reform, the initiation of a health justice grounded lexicon in criminal justice has opened the doorway to new and dynamic scholarly engagement. This Article initiates a two-pronged interdisciplinary project at the nexus of criminal law, public health, and restorative justice. First, it seeks to make visible an often-unnamed recursive theoretical framework—health inequities influence carcerality and carcerality influences health inequities. Second, it recognizes a gap in research, public discourse, and policy and specifically intervenes to examine restorative justice diversion in a manner that neither the legal nor public health fields have before. More precisely, it locates restorative justice diversion in the framework of structural health interventions. Synthesizing multiple strands of research, this Article departs from the traditional understanding of upstream criminal justice interventions by identifying and mapping not only direct health outcomes of participation in restorative justice diversion but also how such interventions in the criminal legal system may alter the larger social context by which health disparities emerge and persist. This project’s central aims are to: prioritize diminishing exposure to the criminal legal system; expand non-carceral measures for safety, accountability, community healing, and wellbeing; and, consequently, substantively impact racial health inequities.

刑事司法和公共卫生交叉领域的一项新讨论揭示了刑事法律体系中常见的种族主义——无论是在警务实践中还是在监狱环境中——如何导致健康方面的非凡后果。根据系统参与对健康产生有害影响的经验证据，再加上 COVID-19 带来的新威胁，倡导者和学者越来越多地呼吁对美国的监狱制度进行具有种族意识的公共卫生驱动的改革。认识到健康对监狱改革的重要性，基于健康正义的刑事司法词汇的启动为新的、充满活力的学术参与打开了大门。本文启动了一个结合刑法、公共卫生和恢复性司法的双管齐下的跨学科项目。第一的，它试图揭示一个经常未命名的递归理论框架——健康不平等影响癌症，而癌症又影响健康不平等。其次，它认识到研究、公共话语和政策方面的差距，并以法律和公共卫生领域以前从未有过的方式进行专门干预以审查恢复性司法转移。更准确地说，它将恢复性司法转移置于结构性卫生干预措施的框架内。综合多方面的研究，本文背离了对上游刑事司法干预措施的传统理解，不仅确定和绘制了参与恢复性司法转移的直接健康结果，而且还确定了刑事法律体系中的此类干预措施如何改变健康差距出现和持续的更大社会背景。该项目的中心目标是： 优先考虑减少接触刑事法律系统的机会；扩大安全、问责、社区康复和福祉方面的非监禁措施；从而对种族健康不平等产生实质性影响。