Half of Incarcerated Teens in New York City Have Brain Injuries, Study Says

The latest study in a growing body of research examining head trauma among young offenders found that about half of all of New York City's 16- to 18-year-olds have some sort of traumatic brain injury based on questionnaires.

According to New York City's Independent Budget Office, there are 12,287 inmates in city jails (as of 2012) in which 7% (or 860) are between the ages of 16 and 18. Of the top six arrest charges recorded by the budget office, robbery, murder/attempted murder/manslaughter, and assault are three of them. The study found that most of the brain trauma suffered from the jailed youths is a result of assaults.

Published online in the Journal of Adolescent Health, "Traumatic Brain Injury Among Newly Admitted Adolescents in the New York City Jail System," was coauthored by five medical experts. Their goal was to track the prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in adolescents who are jailed.

The researchers had 384 participants in total: 300 males and 84 females within the New York City jail system back in 2012. Each participant was given a medical brain injury questionnaire and their health records were examined by the researchers to ensure the answers aligned with the facts. They found that 50% of males and 49% of females were admitted into jail with some sort of traumatic brain injury.

These results, coupled with further research on the subject, could alter the state of affairs within jails/prisons that have a decent population of youths with traumatic brain injuries. These injuries are often overlooked, undiagnosed, or misdiagnosed because symptoms aren't immediately noticeable. This issue is relative to the concussion controversy in the NFL.

"You need to train the correction officers to understand brain injuries so that when somebody may be acting rude or answering back or forgetting what they're supposed to do, it's not a sign of maladaptive misbehavior or disrespect, it's a sign of a brain injury," said Wayne Gordon, a brain injury expert at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, in this Time Magazine article.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides statistics and studies regarding traumatic brain injuries among the population and in jails/prisons. You can read more about the study and its findings in this Huffington Post article.