Opioid Prescribing Rates and Criminal Justice and Health Outcomes

This brief uses California’s CURES (Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System) 2.0 data to analyze county-level opioid prescribing rates in California from 2012 to 2017 from multiple perspectives. The book summarizes California’s county-level opioid prescribing trends, examines potential correlates of opioid prescribing rates, and assesses the association of opioid prescribing on both criminal justice and public health outcomes. Finally, the authors discuss their principal findings and the implications for policy and practice, including the significant and lasting consequences of the opioid crisis on the criminal justice system and the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach to effectively address the crisis.

Wesley G. Jennings, Ph.D., is Chair and Professor in the Department of Legal Studies at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss).  In addition, he also has a Courtesy Appointment in the Department of Health Outcomes & Biomedical Informatics and is a Faculty Affiliate of the Institute for Child Health Policy in the College of Medicine at the University of Florida.  He received his doctorate degree in criminology from the University of Florida.  He has over 250 publications, his h-index is 49 (i-index of 141), and he has over 8,500 citations to his published work.  He was recognized as the #1 criminologist in the world (at his previous rank of Assistant Professor: Copes et al., JCJE, 2013); the #1 criminologist in the world at his previous rank of Associate Professor (Khey, JCJE, 2017), and the #3 criminologist in the world across all ranks in terms of his peer-reviewed scholarly publication productivity in the top criminology and criminal justice journals (Cohn & Farrington, JCJE, 2014).  He is the author of several recently published, academic press books with Springer: Female delinquency from childhood to young adulthood: Recent results from the Pittsburgh Girls Study (with Rolf Loeber, Lia Ahonen, Alex Piquero, and David Farrington); Offending from childhood to young adulthood: Recent results from the Pittsburgh Youth Study (with Rolf Loeber, Dustin Pardini, Alex Piquero, and David Farrington); and Offending from childhood to late middle age: Recent results from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (with David Farrington & Alex Piquero).  In addition, he is the author (with Jennifer Reingle) of the 2^nd edition of Criminological and Criminal Justice Research Methods (published by Wolters Kluwer), and an author (with Ronald Akers & Christine Sellers) of the 7^th edition of Criminological Theories: Introduction, Evaluation, and Application (published by Oxford University Press). His major research interests are quantitative methods and longitudinal data analysis.  He is a member of the American Society of Criminology, and a Lifetime Member of both the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences and the Southern Criminal Justice Association.  Finally, he is currently the Vice President of the Southern Criminal Justice Association.

Nicholas Perez, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Emergency Management at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB).  He has authored or co-authored peer-reviewed journal articles in Aggression and Violent Behavior, the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, Crime & Delinquency, the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Security Journal, the Journal of Criminal Justice Education, and Child Abuse & Neglect. His main research interests involve the development of delinquent behavior, policing, and opioid and prescription drug abuse. In addition to his academic appointment, he currently works as a research consultant for a Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) grant examining opioid prescription data in California.  He is a member of both the American Society of Criminology and the Western Society of Criminology.

Chris Delcher, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist and assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice and Science and the associate director of the Institute for Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy at the University of Kentucky. In addition, he also a Courtesy Appointment in the Department of Health Outcomes & Biomedical Informatics and is a Faculty Affiliate of the Institute for Child Health Policy in the College of Medicine at the University of Florida.  He received his Master’s degree from the University of North Carolina's Gillings School of Global Public Health and his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Florida.  He has authored or co-authored more than 50 publications in leading medical and public health journals including the Annals of Internal Medicine, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the American Journal of Public Health, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Journal of Adolescent Health, Drug & Alcohol Dependence, and Forensic Science International and is co-author of Data Driven Approaches for Healthcare: Machine learning for Identifying High Utilizers. His research focuses on the epidemiology of prescription drug use from data obtained during medical and pharmacy encounters, understanding the intended and unintended consequences of drug policy and its effects on population health, and enhancing public health surveillance systems in high and low resource environments.

Yanning Wang, M.S., is a Data Management Analyst in the Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics in the College of Medicine at the University of Florida. She has authored or co-authored peer-reviewed journal articles in JAMA, the Annals of Internal Medicine, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the American Journal of Public Health, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Drug & Alcohol Dependence, the American Journal of Epidemiology, the American Journal of Occupational Therapy, Accident Analysis & Prevention, and Forensic Science International. Her research focus is injury surveillance and prevention. She currently works on strategic planning for public health initiatives, develops and maintains a drug-related outcomes surveillance system, and leads research on drug abuse and overdose prevention funded by the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance. Ms. Yanning Wang was the architect for the first, publicly-available data-driven surveillance system for monitoring prescription and other drug-related outcomes in Florida. She works closely with public health and public safety agencies to develop prevention strategies to address the ongoing drug overdose epidemic. Ms. Wang has also conducted a series of studies to investigate emerging drug epidemics and evaluate the impact of national drug policies on populations vulnerable to substance abuse.