The Effect of Multiple Types of Intimate Partner Violence on Maternal Criminal Justice Involvement

Abstract

Although men make up a large majority of the U.S. incarcerated population, in recent years, incarceration rates have increased faster for women. As a result, scholarship has increasingly sought to hone in on the causes and correlates of women's criminal behavior and criminal justice involvement. One factor that has been consistently found to be associated with criminal behavior and criminal justice involvement is exposure to intimate partner violence. This existing scholarship has largely focused on physical and sexual abuse and has not examined whether exposure to multiple types of abuse places women at a particularly great risk for criminal justice involvement. In this study, we begin to address these gaps by examining two questions: (a) is there an independent association between different types of intimate partner violence (physical, sexual, emotional, and economic) and a mother's risk of experiencing criminal justice involvement; and (b) is the exposure to multiple types of intimate partner violence particularly detrimental to mothers? To address these questions, we use longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and logistic regression models. First, we find evidence that mothers who have experienced any abuse type are at greater risk of criminal justice involvement. Second, once co-occurrence of abuse types is accounted for, only physical and economic abuse are independently associated with a greater risk of criminal justice involvement. Third, we find that being exposed to multiple types of intimate partner violence places women at particularly great risk for criminal justice involvement. These findings point to the need for criminal justice actors to take intimate partner violence into account when they are making decisions that impact women. These results also highlight the importance of legal advocacy for domestic violence counselors in their work with women.

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