evidence: Currently, there are more than two million people in prisons or jails, with nearly two-thirds meeting the criteria for a substance use disorder. Following these patterns, overdose is the leading cause of death following release from prison and the third leading cause of death during periods of incarceration in jails. Traditional quantitative methods analyzing the factors associated with overdose following incarceration may fail to capture structural and environmental factors present in specific communities. People with lived experiences in the criminal legal system and with substance use disorder hold unique perspectives and must be involved in the research process. [...] Specifically, incarcerated individuals are at least 40 to 129 times as likely to die from a drug overdose compared to the general public two weeks following their release (Binswanger et al., 2007; Overdose Deaths and Jail Incarceration, n.d.; Ranapurwala et al., 2018). Furthermore, there was a 600% increase in deaths related to alcohol intoxication or drug overdoses in state prisons from 2001 to 2018 and over a 200% increase in county jails (Schwartzapfel & Jenkins, 2021).