DOI: 10.3886/icpsr37327.v1
title: Post-Incarceration Partner Violence: Examining the Social Context of Victimization to Inform Victim Services and Prevention, 5 U.S. States, 2008-2015

description: Do post-incarceration partner violence experiences in justice-involved couples conform to the most widely used evidence based typology of partner violence in the general population (Johnson, 2008)? What aspects of social context at the individual, couple/family, and community levels shape post-incarceration partner violence experiences? Do couple/family-level social context factors mediate the observed relationship between the identified community-level influences and experiences of partner violence? What social context factors at the individual, couple/family, and community levels do members of justice-involved couples see as shaping their experiences of partner violence? Victim advocates and criminal justice system personnel have long recognized the importance of context in guiding victim services and criminal justice system responses to violence, yet little evidence exists to guide such approaches. Despite the very high prevalence of post-incarceration partner violence observed in the first study to rigorously measure it (the Multi-site Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering), little is known of the social contextual factors that shape violent victimization in justice-involved couples. The Post-Incarceration Partner Violence: Examining the Social Context of Victimization to Inform Victim Services and Prevention study addressed this gap by assessing the role of contextual factors that empirical and theoretical work suggests could affect partner violence in this vulnerable population. This secondary analysis study drew on longitudinal data from the MFS-IP dataset and other public sources to develop an actionable understanding of the social contexts that influence the observed high prevalence of violence in a sample of couples that have contact with the criminal justice system but are disconnected from formal service delivery systems or other sources of help. The researcher conducted a theory-driven typology analysis to describe the social context of post-incarceration partner violence at the couple level, and utilized quantitative modeling and in-depth qualitative analysis to assess the individual-, couple/family-, and community-level contexts that shape partner violence.
description: The purpose of this study was to better understand the social context of post-incarceration partner violence victimization. This, in turn, informs context-responsive victim services and primary and secondary prevention efforts.
description: The study relied primarily on quantitative data from the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting and Partnering ("Multi-site Family Study"), funded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and Office of Family Assistance. The Multi-site Family Study was a longitudinal, couples-based study of family relationships during a male partner's incarceration and reentry carried out from 2008-2015. In addition to the Multi-site Family Study quantitative data previously archived, the current project prepared and used a deidentified qualitative dataset collected with a subset of Multi-site Family Study. The Post-Incarceration Partner Violence Study obtained data from three government sources: state correctional agencies (as compiled by Justice Atlas), the U.S. Census Bureau (as compiled by the Population Studies Center at the Institute for Social Research), and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Justice Atlas, an open-access source for criminal justice system data, provided deidentified, aggregated data on prison admissions rate (admissions per 1,000 adults) by ZIP code for three of the five states to which Multi-site Family Study participants returned from prison. The Population Studies Center provided deidentified, aggregated American Community Survey data on mean and median income by ZIP code. The CDC provided restricted-access data on violent death by ZIP code from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) as well as public data on life expectancy at birth by ZIP code through the Small-area Life Expectancy Estimates Project. The data use agreement for NVDRS specifies that, to protect NVDRS subjects, the ZIP code-level data provided for this project cannot be included in public archiving. Multi-site Family Study quantitative data were then linked with data from government sources using the ZIP code variable.
description: Variables in this study focus on topics such as collective efficacy, controlling behavior, feelings of safety, perceptions of one's own or one's children's physical safety, formal social control, experiences or perceptions of surveillance, encounters with law enforcement or correctional personnel not involving physical force or coercion, informal social control, physical violence, poverty, financial strain, money fears or worries, sense of scarcity, mental health symptoms, experiences or perceptions of emotional disregulation, perceived life chances, perceptions of own future prospects, experiences of forcible arrest and forcible imprisonment, other experiences of physical violence by government agents, feelings of physical helplessness while under forcible confinement, parenting, birth trauma, gaps in contributions and perspectives between partners or coparents resulting from formerly incarcerated men's lack of life skills, conflict initiation, illegal activities, and trauma.
description: Not Applicable
description: Response Rates: Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting and Partnering: Response rates were 76% at baseline, 74% at 9 months, 78% at 18 months, and 83% at 34 months.
description: Presence of Common Scales: None
description: Datasets: DS1: PIPV Data
description: audio computer-assisted self interview (ACASI); record abstracts; computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); mixed modeThe qualitative data are not available at this time.
description: Opposite-sex couples in which the male partner was incarcerated at the time of study enrollment. Smallest Geographic Unit: zip code
description: The Multi-site Family Study conducted separate but parallel surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews with 1,991 incarcerated men and 1,482 of their intimate or coparenting partners from five U.S. states. Participants completed baseline surveys during the male partner's incarceration in state prison, with follow-up surveys conducted 9, 18, and 34 months later. Qualitative data were collected from 167 respondents during in-depth, open-ended interviews of approximately 90 minutes that occurred around the time of the male partner's reentry from prison. The Post-Incarceration Partner Violence study used survey data from both members of study couples and from each follow-up time point, including baseline, 9-, 18-, and 34-month waves. For analyses involving linking to other government data sources, individuals who lived in ZIP codes with only one study participant (483 ZIP codes) were excluded. The qualitative analysis focused on the subset of qualitative study participants who discussed intimate partner violence during their interviews (N=66).