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A rich empirical literature documents the consequences of mass incarceration for the wealth, health, and safety of Black Americans. Yet it often frames such consequences as a regrettable artifact of racially disproportionate criminal legal system contact, rather than situating the impetus and functioning of the criminal legal system in the wider context of White political and economic domination. Revisiting a quarter century of mass incarceration research through a stratification economics lens, we highlight how mass incarceration shapes Black–White competition for education, employment, and financial resources and contributes to Black–White disparities in well-being. Highlighting persistent research gaps, we propose a research agenda to better understand how mass incarceration contributes to systematic White advantage. To address mass incarceration's consequences and transform the conditions of White political and economic domination under which it arose, we call for legislative and judicial intervention to remedy White hyper-enfranchisement and reparations to eliminate the Black–White wealth gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women in heavily policed and incarcerated communities face extremely high rates of intimate partner violence (IPV)—but how criminal legal system contact affects such violence remains poorly understood. This study explores the social ecology of IPV by fitting structural equation models to longitudinal, dyadic data from households in contact with the criminal legal system (N = 2,224) and their local communities. Results suggest that a complex of factors at multiple social-ecological levels—including adverse local conditions, dysfunctional couple conflict, and men's behavioral health and perceptions of their neighborhoods—may put women at heightened risk of IPV victimization in a time of mass incarceration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life course theories suggest that fathers' lifetime criminal legal system contact could contribute to poor parent–child outcomes via deterioration in couple relationship quality and fathers' behavioral health. Using paired, longitudinal data from the Multi-site Family Study (N = 1,112 couples), the current study examines the influence of three dimensions of fathers' life course legal system contact on individual and parent–child outcomes. In fitted models, accumulated system contact in adulthood predicts fathers' later depressive symptoms and drug misuse, which in turn predict diminished father–child relationship quality (as reported by both co-parents). Fathers who were older at the time of their first arrest had poorer relationships with their children's mothers and, in turn, poorer behavioral health and parent–child outcomes. Conditions of confinement during fathers' most recent prison stay do not significantly predict later parent–child outcomes, net of the influence of age at first arrest and accumulated criminal legal system contact in adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exceptionally high rates of partner violence perpetration are evident among men returning from prison. Two bodies of scholarship, one on family stress and another on exposure to state violence, each suggest that criminal legal system exposure could promote partner violence perpetration via changes in men's behavioral health and interpersonal approach and in couples' conflict dynamics. Such relationships have not been tested in quantitative research. Structural equation models were fitted to longitudinal, couples-based survey data from the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering. Participants included men returning from a state prison term in five U.S. states (N = 1112) and their committed intimate or co-parenting partners (N = 1112). Models tested hypothesized pathways from three dimensions of criminal legal system exposure to later partner violence perpetration. In fitted models, men's childhood criminal legal system exposure predicts their post-prison partner violence perpetration via adult post-traumatic stress symptoms, reactivity, avoidance, and dysfunctional couple conflict dynamics. Men's cumulative criminal legal system exposure in adulthood predicts their post-prison partner violence perpetration via addiction and dysfunctional couple conflict. These initial results suggest that mass-scale incarceration could worsen partner violence via men's psychological and interpersonal adaptations to criminal legal system contact, particularly when such contact is sustained or occurs at a developmentally significant period in the life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are released from prison every year. Drawing on interviews conducted in the mid-2010s in the context of the Multi-site Family Study on Parenting, Partnering and Incarceration, this article explores how the strains of prisoner re-entry interact with those of poverty and family life, and how these combined strains condition proactive engagement with the legal system among re-entering individuals and their intimate and co-parenting partners. We focus our analysis on problems, tensions and struggles for control in parenting and partnership, including inter-parental violence, as these often led to calls or actions that clearly allowed for coercive intervention by parole authorities, courts, child support enforcement, or child protective services. We identify the precise circumstances and motives that lay behind such requests or allowances, and explain how these related to the cynical regard in which former prisoners and their partners typically held the coercive apparatus of the state. Through bringing our empirical findings into an interplay with scholarship on the role of punishment in the governance of poverty under neoliberalism, we examine how the strains faced by former prisoners' households and the tactics they used to deal with them pertain to broader politico-economic arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School-based relationship education programs offer an opportunity to identify youth who are experiencing teen dating violence (TDV), support their safety, and connect them with individualized services or referrals. However, no research has tested the feasibility or accuracy of approaches to create opportunities for TDV disclosure in the context of school-based programs. The current study presents the results of a field test comparing three tools used to provide opportunities for TDV disclosure (two questionnaire-style tools and one universal education discussion guide). High school students from two federally funded healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) program sites (N = 648) were offered the three tools in random order over the course of the HMRE program, which lasted between 3 weeks and 3 months and took place during the school day. Onsite qualitative interviews with HMRE program staff and their local domestic violence program partners assessed how service providers saw the tools and the process of implementing them. Latent class models examined the accuracy of the tools in identifying TDV. Sensitivities of the tools were low and specificities were high; the questionnaire-style tools tended to have higher sensitivities and fewer classification errors than the universal education tool. Several three-item combinations from across the tools performed better than any intact tool, suggesting that shorter assessments may be effective, provided they include items on sexual coercion and physical violence. Qualitative findings suggested that implementation of TDV assessment and universal education in school settings is a viable strategy, provided programs are able to gain support from school staff, adapt to tight time constraints, and plan procedures for protecting student privacy and confidentiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In prior research, samples of incarcerated and reentering men and their partners report partner violence at roughly 10 times the frequency found in the general population. The relationship dynamics underlying these experiences remain poorly understood. Addressing this gap and expanding prior applications of Johnson's typology in other populations—which typically rely on survey data alone and include reports from just one member of a couple—we applied latent class analysis with dyadic survey data from 1,112 couples to identify types of partner violence in couples affected by incarceration. We assessed congruence between quantitative types and couples' qualitative accounts and compared the two major types using two-sample t -tests. In some couples, one partner used various tactics to systematically dominate and control the other, as in Johnson's coercive controlling violence. In others, physical violence arose in the context of jealousy but no other controlling behavior. This type resembled Johnson's situational couple violence. Qualitative data suggested that jealousy represented a common, situational response to periods of prolonged separation, relationship instability, status insecurity, and partnership concurrence and not a tactic of control per se. Victims of coercive controlling violence experienced more PTSD symptoms and felt less safe in their relationships than victims of jealous-only violence. Perpetrators of coercive controlling violence were more likely to use severe physical violence against their partners than perpetrators of jealous-only violence. Findings indicate that broader context is critical for interpreting the presence of jealousy (and whether it constitutes a control tactic). They indicate that prevention and response strategies tailored to these types could help couples cope safely with the extreme relationship stressors of incarceration and reentry. Finally, they suggest a need to move from an exclusive focus on individual accountability and services toward a model that also incorporates institutional accountability and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incarcerated coparenting involves negotiating rules, responsibilities, and contributions while a partner is incarcerated. Using a structural family therapy lens and data from the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting and Partnering, ordinary least squares multiple linear regression answered: Do incarcerated fathers with stronger familial ties perceive themselves to have a higher consensus of coparenting and does race/ethnicity moderate the relationship between familial ties and consensus of coparenting? Results revealed higher education, stable parents growing up, and living with their child prior to incarceration predict a higher consensus of coparenting. Race/ethnicity does not moderate relationships between familial ties and consensus of coparenting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior work suggests that partner violence may occur in the context of relationship dissolution among couples in which the male partner is reentering from prison. Using longitudinal data from 666 reentering men and their female partners, we found that couples who were no longer romantically involved were more likely to report violence in the relationship at reentry than those who were. Among those who broke up, 28% of women and 10% of men reported violence as a reason. Men who reported IPV in their relationships were less likely to report being in a romantic relationship with their study partner at the next survey wave than those who did not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative and preliminary quantitative research suggests that reentry from prison could be a time of heightened intimate partner violence (IPV) risk. Using data from 666 different-sex couples who participated in the dyadic, longitudinal Multi-site Family Study of Incarceration, Parenting and Partnering, we found that physical violence and controlling behavior were highly prevalent before and after incarceration. Women were more likely than their male partners to experience severe and frequent physical partner violence victimization. Participants with stronger healthy relationship beliefs, stronger conflict resolution skills, and longer relationship duration were less likely to report violence after the male partner's release from prison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely recognized that a father’s incarceration strains a family, but too little is known about preincarceration family life, how families divided by incarceration navigate the imprisonment, and what they expect for postrelease family life. We analyze data from 1,482 incarcerated men and their partners to examine the assets and challenges that families brought with them into the incarceration experience; their considerable efforts to maintain family life during an incarceration in the face of physical separation and other obstacles; and the areas of convergence and divergence in their expectations for family life after the male partner’s release. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a substantial base of literature on father-child relationships, little is known about how incarceration affects these relationships, or how fathers connect with and support their children during the reentry period. In the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting and Partnering (MFS-IP) sample, deterioration from preincarceration to reentry was evident in various aspects of father-child relationships, including reduced coresidence, financial support, and frequency of father-child activities. Multivariate modeling and qualitative analysis identified factors that shaped these aspects of father-child relationships at reentry, including father-child contact during incarceration, child age, and fathers’ relationships with their partners or coparents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parenting and romantic partnership changes and challenges that occur in the context of incarceration are not yet fully understood, in part due to longstanding limitations in available data on the family lives of justice-involved individuals. This article reviews that prior work and introduces a set of new contributions in this volume of findings from the Multisite Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering (MFS-IP). The MFS-IP study brings new insight on parenting and partnership during incarceration and reentry, using longitudinal data collected from 2008-2015 with 1,482 committed romantic or coparenting couples in which the male partner was incarcerated at baseline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Multisite Family Study on Incarceration, Partnering, and Parenting documented the impact of couples-based relationship education on intimate relationship quality; parenting and coparenting quality; and employment, drug use, and recidivism. Matched comparison and wait list designs were implemented in four sites. Comparisons of weighted means and latent growth curve models showed consistent positive effects in the Indiana site on a number of family relationship quality outcomes and largely insignificant effects in Ohio, New York, and New Jersey. Delivering couples' healthy relationship retreats in the context of a broader character-and faith-based unit may help reinforce the skills learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Multisite Family Study on Incarceration, Partnering and Parenting documented the implementation and effectiveness of family-strengthening programming for incarcerated and reentering men and their intimate or coparenting partners. The findings presented in this issue use data collected for the impact study and qualitative substudy, which provide detailed information on the experiences of couples before, during, and after the male partner’s incarceration. This article describes the methodology and sample characteristics for the impact study, which included longitudinal interviews with nearly 2,000 couples in five states, and the qualitative substudy, which included in-depth interviews with 170 impact sample members in three states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we utilize quantitative and qualitative data from the Multi-Site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering (MFS-IP) to examine couple relationships during men’s reentry. Couples were significantly less likely to report they were in an intimate relationship after release than during incarceration, and rated relationship happiness significantly lower postrelease. Qualitative data indicates that reentry presents new challenges, and obstacles to contact during incarceration reverberate in relationships postrelease. Policy and programming support could help justice-involved couples maintain contact during incarceration and assist in strengthening couples’ communication as they prepare for the male partner’s return to the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A majority of men incarcerated are fathers, but little research has been conducted on the children’s well-being after their father’s release from incarceration. We measured changes in internalizing and externalizing problems (based on father’s and female partner’s report) across a 34-month period among children ages 6-17 (n = 431). Results suggested increased internalizing and externalizing problems in older children, increased internalizing problems when fathers had problem alcohol use, and a moderating role of father-child coresidence and father-child relationship. Programs to promote paternal well-being and father-child relationships before and after reentry may benefit children of incarcerated fathers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substance users are more likely to have co-occurring health problems, and this pattern is intensified among those involved with the criminal justice system. Interview data for 1977 incarcerated men in 5 states from the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering that was conducted between December 2008 and August 2011 were analyzed to compare pre-incarceration substance use patterns and health outcomes between men who primarily used marijuana, primarily used alcohol, primarily used other drugs, and did not use any illicit substances during that time. Using regression modeling, we examined the influence of substance use patterns on physical and mental health. Primary marijuana users comprised the largest portion of the sample (31.5%), closely followed by nonusers (30.0%), and those who primarily used other drugs (30.0%); primary alcohol users comprised the smallest group (19.6%). The substance user groups differed significantly from the nonuser group on many aspects of physical and mental health. Findings suggest that even among justice-involved men who are not using "hard" drugs, substance use merits serious attention. Expanding the availability of substance use treatment during and after incarceration might help to promote physical and mental health during incarceration and reentry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family members of incarcerated people are often faced with financial, social and emotional costs related to the imprisonment of their loved ones. These costs can be conceptualized as investments both in the sustenance of personal relationships and in a greater social good in the form of assisting with the reintegration of former prisoners. In this article, we draw upon data from a mixed-methods study to elucidate the costs of detention on families of prisoners. We demonstrate that financial, social and emotional costs associated with imprisonment of a family member are interrelated and often compound each other, indicating the importance of addressing them in a holistic framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact of incarceration on family relationships. Topics discussed include significant role that prisoners' family relationships play in their reintegration after release, maintenance of family relationships during incarceration, and healthy family reunification after release.

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) are workplace resources available to employees with problems impacting work performance. EAPs are well-positioned to address intimate partner violence (IPV), a major public health problem with workplace impacts. A purposeful sample of 28 EAPs across the United States was surveyed to identify policies and programs to address IPV, including perpetration. Most EAPs did not report having standardized approaches for addressing IPV perpetration. EAPs also described significant barriers to identifying IPV perpetrators, with the majority relying on self-disclosure on the part of the perpetrator when contacting the EAP These results suggest that many EAPs—even when interacting with employees who present with issues known to correlate with LPV—are missing a potential opportunity to assess and intervene with IPV perpetrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay addresses the intergenerational effects of parental incarceration on the well-being of their children in the U.S. It references an article by Sarah Wakefield and Christopher Wildeman which discussed the impact of parental incarceration on the long-term educational and occupational achievement of children. It suggests investment in diversion programs and initiatives to reduce recidivism.

Given the widespread impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) on the workplace it is critical to understand the involvement of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) in workplace-focused IPV activities. Representatives from a diverse set of 28 external EAPs participated in an “inventory” of practices related to IPV. The study found that the IPV services available to customer companies at the worksite are extensive and primarily include assistance with policy development, delivery of trainings and seminars, delivery of educational/awareness-raising activities, and provision of management/security staff consultation. Yet companies' lack of awareness regarding the role of IPV as a workplace issue challenges the ability of EAPs to deliver extensive workplace-based IPV services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Incarcerated fathers and their coparenting partners experience serious challenges to their health and well-being, beyond the general population. The interdependent nature of romantic involvement and coparenting a child suggests that self-reported mental health and the perceived consensus of the coparenting relationship may predict the physical health of not only the individual, but their partner. Method: We use Actor-Partner Interdependence Modeling (APIM) for 483 romantically involved coparents from the Multisite Family study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering to explore this link. Each dyad consists of an incarcerated male and a nonincarcerated female. Results: Results indicate a significant link between mental and physical health for each dyad member (actor effects). Additionally, a partner effect links perceived consensus of coparenting from men to women, indicating that women whose partners reported a higher perceived consensus of coparenting also reported better physical health. Discussion: Implications for marriage and family therapy, criminal justice, health, and human services policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the widespread impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) on the workplace it is critical to understand the involvement of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) in workplace-focused IPV activities. A cross-sectional design was employed to obtain information from a diverse set of EAPs, with detailed information about the types of services being offered to address IPV among employees served. EAPs were identified from various sources, including national EAP organisations, an advisory group to the larger grant, individual EAPs and other organisations and individuals who work or conduct research with data was collected from publicly available information and through semistructured telephone interviews with key informants from each EAP. EAPs A total of 28 EAPs were identified and information about how EAPs assist workplaces, IPV victims and perpetrators was collected. We found that the IPV services available to employers and employees are extensive and primarily include assistance with policy development, delivery of trainings and seminars, delivery of educational/awareness-raising activities and provision of management/security staff consultation. Yet companies lack of awareness regarding the role of IPV as a workplace issue challenges the ability of EAPs to deliver extensive workplace-based IPV services. EAP representatives also reported challenges in identifying IPV victims, since standardised procedures to do so were limited. Findings from this research provide clear evidence that most EAPs are providing both general prevention activities in the workplace and individual employee services for IPV although these services range from limited to fairly comprehensive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]