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Purpose: Scholarship on the social and structural determinants of intimate partner violence (IPV) rarely differentiates between Johnson's types in examining pathways to violent outcomes. This study applies Bronfenbrenner's model to consider the etiology of Johnson's types at multiple social-ecological levels. Method: To test the hypothesis that pathways from local social and structural conditions to IPV differ by type of IPV, I reanalyzed longitudinal data from a recent study that explored the role of factors at multiple social-ecological levels on physical IPV in a highly vulnerable sample: 1,112 different-sex couples in which the male partner had recently returned from prison. Results: In fitted structural equation models, local social and structural conditions predict both situational couple violence (SCV) and coercive controlling violence (CCV). However, the influence of local conditions on each type of IPV occurs via different proximal factors. Local conditions predict SCV via hopelessness and predict CCV via post-traumatic stress and dysfunctional conflict. Conclusions: These exploratory findings indicate that local social and structural conditions could promote both SCV and CCV, but via different proximal processes. They suggest that IPV research has much to gain from integrating the distinct theoretical and methodological contributions of scholarship on Johnson's typology and ongoing inquiry into the broader social ecology of IPV., Author(s): Tasseli McKay [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) https://ror.org/00py81415, grid.26009.3d, 0000 0004 1936 7961, Department of Sociology, Duke University, , Durham, United States Introduction Among the culminating insights of 20th-century intimate [...]

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. Keywords: physical health, mental health, incarcerated coparenting, incarceration, criminal justice, Over half (53%) of the American incarcerated population are parents of minor children (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). African American children have a7.5% chance of having a parent in prison, while [...]

Efforts to connect intimate partner violence (IPV) and teen dating violence (TDV) survivors with services rely heavily on victimization screening, despite extensive evidence that many will not disclose abuse even with the best-available screening tools. This study examines how two forms of brief IPV/TDV intervention (screening and universal education) affect important outcomes other than disclosure, including participants' perceptions of options and resources for addressing IPV/TDV and maintaining safety. This study applies regression models and inductive qualitative analysis to survey data from adults (N = 646) and youth (N = 648) and accompanying qualitative interview data to explore participants' perceptions of safety-related resources and options after completing a set of randomly assigned brief IPV/TDV interventions. Brief IPV/TDV interventions (including screening and universal education) may influence safety options and connection to resources, even in the absence of disclosure. The brief interventions examined in this study supported participants' awareness of available resources and sparked personal reflection and insight. Organizational-level outcomes included stronger community partnerships, increased capacity for communicating about IPV/TDV, and expanded services for survivors. These outcomes appeared to be strongly shaped by how staff approached IPV/TDV-related interactions with participants. Implementation of brief IPV/TDV interventions in the context of high school and community-based relationship education programs represent a promising strategy for promoting safety and safety-related empowerment among youth and adult survivors. Future research should continue to examine outcomes of such interventions beyond disclosure., Author(s): Tasseli E. McKay [sup.1] [sup.2] , Marni L. Kan [sup.2] , Justin Landwehr [sup.2] , Elizabeth Miller [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.26009.3d, 0000 0004 1936 7961, Duke University, , [...]

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]

More than half of inmates--52 percent of state inmates and 63 percent of federal inmates--are parents of minor children. Subsequently, many children are affected by a parent's incarceration, with estimates [...]