PCH: Faculty

David Lovell, PhD Research Associate Professor Psychosocial & Community Health Box 357263 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195-7263 Email Address: lovelld@u.washington.edu

I come to the School of Nursing by a roundabout route. I received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin in 1975, and taught philosophy for several years before getting involved with prison work. I taught and worked as a counselor in prisons in Washington and New York, and in 1982-1983 was "philosopher-in-residence" with the Connecticut Department of Correction. After returning to Washington in the mid-80's, I worked as a programmer at the UW and went back to school, receiving an MSW from the UW School of Social Work in 1993.

Since 1993 I have worked with the University of Washington-Department of Corrections Mental Health Collaboration. This project is based in the Department of Psychosocial and Community Health and focuses on research and program development to cope with the growing numbers of persons with severe mental illness who are found in prisons and jails. I have joined clinical consultations and conducted program evaluations for a special mental health unit at McNeil Island Corrections Center, which we helped design, and have also worked on some policy-related issues. The policy work included writing a bill on community supervision of offenders with mental illness, which was passed by the Washington legislature and signed into law in 1998. A major research effort for the last several years, sponsored by the Washington Institute on Mental Illness Research and Training, has been to conduct studies on recidivism and service use of persons with mental illness who have left prison; the State of Washington has shown leadership in developing intervention programs for this population, and our team has led the effort to evaluate these programs.

A recent project of the Collaboration concerns the problems posed by "supermax" units, extremely restrictive isolation facilities that are a new feature of many prison systems, including Washington's. We conducted the first systematic review and survey of current supermax inmates, and the only study of recidivism among such inmates: this study was supported by the School of Nursing and was cited in 2006 to back one of the recommendations of the high-level National Commission on Prisoner Safety and Abuse. Like the work with mentally ill prisoners, this project raises fundamental questions about what prisons are for and why we send so many of our fellow citizens there. The larger social policy concerns that engaged me when I first began working with prisoners, over twenty years ago, continue to inspire the more detailed, empirically-oriented research I am now conducting with the support of my colleagues at the UW and in state government. Recently completed studies include Who Lives in Supermax? A Washington State Study; Recidivism and Service Use Among Mentally Ill Offenders Released from Prison; Drug-Related Crime and Disorder: Practical Policy Options; and Assessment of psychosocial impairment in a supermaximum security unit sample. (Criminal Justice and Behavior 33(4): 1-22, 2006).

Links

Drug-Related Crime and Disorder Recidivism and Use of Services Among Persons With Mental Illness After Release From Prison Who Lives in Super-Maximum Custody? A Washington State Study

Current Projects

• Department of Correction Mental Health Consultation (Principal Investigator)