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

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.