Prison's open--and hidden--wounds for black men.

• Position: Incarceration

Not only do former inmates with a relative behind bars cope better than their never-incarcerated peers --rather than worse, as predicted--those former inmates experience better mental health than former inmates whose relatives were all free. Meanwhile, never-incarcerated African-American men behaved as expected--they were more distressed when a relative was behind bars, maintain sociologists at Vanderbilt University, Knoxville, Tenn.

Study findings about formerly incarcerated African-American men was such a surprise that the researchers went back and re-analyzed the data to make sure they had not made any measurement errors or missed any mitigating factors; they did not.

"It did not make sense because, if you care about your family, and you've been incarcerated, and you know how it can strip you of dignity, be isolating, and in some ways so damaging that you never recover from it, then you would feel much worse when someone in your family was going through the same thing--and what we found was the complete opposite," explains lead author Tony Brown, associate professor of sociology.

So, why do former inmates seem to do better when a relative is locked up? The researchers considered a number of reasons. One theory is that sharing the experience of incarceration makes a former inmate feel less socially isolated. 'There is this other family...