School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Institute of Population Health, Liverpool University, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
JMIR Form Res. 2024 Nov 22;8:e60878. doi: 10.2196/60878.
The field of epidemiological criminology (or justice health research) has emerged in the past decade, studying the intersection between the public health and justice systems. To ensure research efforts are focused and equitable, it is important to reflect on the outputs in this area and address knowledge gaps.
This study aimed to examine the characteristics of populations researched in a large sample of published outputs and identify research gaps and biases.
A rule-based, text mining method was applied to 34,481 PubMed abstracts published from 1963 to 2023 to identify 4 population characteristics (sex, age, offender type, and nationality).
We evaluated our method in a random sample of 100 PubMed abstracts. Microprecision was 94.3%, with microrecall at 85.9% and micro-F-score at 89.9% across the 4 characteristics. Half (n=17,039, 49.4%) of the 34,481 abstracts did not have any characteristic mentions and only 1.3% (n=443) reported sex, age, offender type, and nationality. From the 5170 (14.9%) abstracts that reported age, 3581 (69.3%) mentioned young people (younger than 18 years) and 3037 (58.7%) mentioned adults. Since 1990, studies reporting female-only populations increased, and in 2023, these accounted for almost half (105/216, 48.6%) of the research outputs, as opposed to 33.3% (72/216) for male-only populations. Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark) had the highest number of abstracts proportional to their incarcerated populations. Offenders with mental illness were the most common group of interest (840/4814, 17.4%), with an increase from 1990 onward.
Research reporting on female populations increased, surpassing that involving male individuals, despite female individuals representing 5% of the incarcerated population; this suggests that male prisoners are underresearched. Although calls have been made for the justice health area to focus more on young people, our results showed that among the abstracts reporting age, most mentioned a population aged <18 years, reflecting a rise of youth involvement in the youth justice system. Those convicted of sex offenses and crimes relating to children were not as researched as the existing literature suggests, with a focus instead on populations with mental illness, whose rates rose steadily in the last 30 years. After adjusting for the size of the incarcerated population, Nordic countries have conducted proportionately the most research. Our findings highlight that despite the presence of several research reporting guidelines, justice health abstracts still do not adequately describe the investigated populations. Our study offers new insights in the field of justice health with implications for promoting diversity in the selection of research participants.
流行病学犯罪学（或司法健康研究）领域在过去十年中出现，研究公共卫生和司法系统之间的交叉点。为了确保研究工作集中和公平，反思该领域的产出并解决知识差距是很重要的。
本研究旨在检查大量已发表成果中研究人群的特征，并确定研究差距和偏见。
应用基于规则的文本挖掘方法对 1963 年至 2023 年发表的 34481 篇 PubMed 摘要进行分析，以确定 4 个人口特征（性别、年龄、罪犯类型和国籍）。
我们在 100 篇 PubMed 摘要的随机样本中评估了我们的方法。4 个特征的微精度为 94.3%，微召回率为 85.9%，微 F-评分为 89.9%。一半（n=17039，49.4%）的 34481 篇摘要没有任何特征提及，只有 1.3%（n=443）报告了性别、年龄、罪犯类型和国籍。在 5170 篇（14.9%）报告年龄的摘要中，3581 篇（69.3%）提到了年轻人（18 岁以下），3037 篇（58.7%）提到了成年人。自 1990 年以来，报告女性人群的研究有所增加，2023 年，这些研究占研究成果的近一半（105/216，48.6%），而男性人群仅占 33.3%（72/216）。北欧国家（瑞典、挪威、芬兰和丹麦）的摘要数量与被监禁人口的比例最高。患有精神疾病的罪犯是最受关注的群体（840/4814，17.4%），自 1990 年以来有所增加。
尽管女性仅占被监禁人口的 5%，但报告女性人群的研究有所增加，超过了涉及男性个体的研究；这表明男性囚犯的研究不足。尽管司法健康领域呼吁更多地关注年轻人，但我们的结果表明，在报告年龄的摘要中，大多数提到了<18 岁的人群，反映了年轻人在少年司法系统中的参与度上升。与现有文献所表明的相反，被判犯有性犯罪和与儿童有关的犯罪的罪犯并没有得到充分研究，而是专注于患有精神疾病的人群，他们的比例在过去 30 年中稳步上升。在考虑到被监禁人口的规模后，北欧国家的研究比例最高。我们的研究结果表明，尽管存在几项研究报告指南，但司法健康摘要仍然不能充分描述所调查的人群。我们的研究为司法健康领域提供了新的见解，并对促进研究参与者的多样性具有影响。
