Researchers at Edinburgh Napier University (ENU) are to play a key role in a new study on the effects of Scotland’s justice system on public health.

Led by the University of Strathclyde, the £1m project funded by the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) aims to identify actions to reduce the negative impacts of justice on health, and increase opportunities to improve health and wellbeing in Scotland’s disadvantaged communities.

The research is in response to the Scottish Government’s desire for the justice system (including police, prison officers and social workers) to pay more attention to people’s health, particularly in deprived communities where many are disproportionately affected by poor health, drugs, crime, criminalisation and victimisation. Until now there has been very little research examining the effects of the justice system on health.

As part of the project, ENU researchers will focus on the key areas of prisons and policing. In prisons, they will look at the use of digital and phone-based technologies to improve healthcare access for prisoners, while on policing they will look at the public health approaches taken by the likes of the Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland and Police Scotland and how these might be strengthened.

This latest research follows studies by ENU researchers into issues connecting justice and health including high-profile work that has seen Police Scotland officers carry Naloxone as standard. Naloxone is an overdose prevention intervention and since ENU recommendations, officers have administered the drug more than 450 times to save a person experiencing an overdose.

ENU researchers will work with colleagues from the University of Strathclyde and the University of Glasgow on the project, which is being funded by the Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office from its Applied Health Research Programme call.

Liz Aston, Professor of Criminology at Edinburgh Napier, is also director of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR), a strategic collaboration between 15 Scottish universities, Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority, with a mission to support internationally excellent, multidisciplinary policing research to inform policy and practice.

She said: "This project builds on research conducted by Edinburgh Napier University and SIPR on the intersect between policing and health and we are looking forward to working with partners to develop the evidence base on the links between health and justice in order to contribute towards reducing health inequalities in Scotland."

Dr Katrina Morrison, Lecturer in Criminology at Edinburgh Napier, and Associate Director of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR), said: "I’m delighted to be leading the prison strand of this important research. We know that people arriving in prison have acute health inequalities, and that the experience of imprisonment further exacerbates these.

"This research will allow us to explore the opportunities for improved healthcare with the expansion of digital technologies in prison, as well as to conceptually connect the prison / health nexus to these issues in the wider justice system.”