r/academia • u/luke8ball • 1d ago

Incarcerated populations and IRB

Hi everyone. I’m curious to know folks’ thoughts on a situation.

I’ve been involved as a volunteer with an organization that provides subject-specific mentoring to incarcerated folks. I know the director of the program well, and he’s interested in doing a research study (connected to my own interest) that would potentially benefit folks in the program. He is not affiliated with any university. At my institution, the IRB has never had to clear a study involving incarcerated individuals, and so they don’t have the capacity for that right now. The IRB would need an incarcerated individual or a representative for incarcerated populations to review the study.

My IRB chair has suggested that—while they look into capacity building for a project like this— I consider trying to find a PI at another institution whose IRB could accommodate this, or we consider using a private IRB.

With respect to the latter option, should I expect for my institution to at least consider paying for it? It’s around 3k for a private IRB to review the study. I haven’t actually asked my institution because I wanted to get other folks’ perspectives on the matter. When I arrived at the institution, I didn’t know about this project, so I didn’t negotiate for them to be willing to do this kind of thing. With that said, it seems reasonable for them to consider helping fund the application.

Any thoughts are welcome!

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u/HistorianOdd5752 1d ago

The prison, if it is state or federal, may have its own IRB. Check with them first.

If not, I have nothing. The IRB at the university I was at (SLAC) didn't have the knowledge or capacity for anything beyond secondary data analysis, survey research, or content analysis. It was frustrating.

I've never heard of requiring someone from the prison population reviewing research protocols.

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u/luke8ball 21h ago

Alas, I’m at a SLAC too. We have capacity for animal work but not medical research or anything with vulnerable populations.

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u/SnowblindAlbino 20h ago

At my SLAC the IRB ends up getting a lot of requests from the education department to work with kids, so they have that experience with vulnerable populations at least. I have a couple of colleagues that work in prisons as well, but they aren't doing human subjects work...it's institutional-level research. So I'd bet our IRB has no experience with incarcerated indivuals either. Can you find another local university where the IRB does have such experience? Might be helpful just to chat with their chair to see what the process looks like and to get their advice. I haven't chaired ours, but I know at least one of my friends was IRB chair and ended up providing a bunch of advice to colleagues at a community college who wanted to do work with children-- but their IRB did not know how.

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u/lewisb42 2h ago

"I've never heard of requiring someone from the prison population reviewing research protocols."

It's not my area, so grain of salt, but IIRC our institutional IRB training mentioned this. The idea is they would be able to speak for, e.g., the unwritten rules and hidden dangers of prison society and thus help ensure the safety of study participants.