Abstract
Women represent a small subset of the incarcerated population, but this does not prevent them from being trapped in the revolving door of the criminal justice system. Because women with children represent the vast majority of incarcerated women, continued criminal justice involvement has critical implications for children and families. Yet little is known about women’s recidivism during the years following release from jail, or how women with and without children differ in their criminal behavior after incarceration. The current study examined patterns of recidivism during the first 7 years post-release from jail among 143 women (77% mothers), evaluating differences between those with and without children. Results indicate motherhood is not a protective factor for re-arrest or undetected re-offenses. Re-arrest rates in the 7 years post-incarceration were equally high for women with and without children—exceeding 50%. When considering detected (resulting in arrest) and undetected crime, women with children were more likely to reoffend than women without children, specifically in the domains of property offenses and violent crimes. Violent re-offenses were especially likely to be domestic in nature. Women with and without children did not differ in drug-related or public order/other offenses. Results suggest the need for interventions to address the material needs of re-entering women with children as well as risk for domestic violence.
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Notes
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The number of violent offenses outcome contained one extreme outlier (373) and one less extreme, though still outlying score (59); all other scores were 0–18. To account for the possibility the extreme score was skewing findings, we conducted our negative binomial analysis in two additional ways: (1) excluding the extreme outlier (373); (2) truncating the extreme score and the second highest score (59) to be 1+ next highest score. Motherhood was a significant predictor in these alternative analytic approaches. The confidence intervals remained wide in these alternative approaches, suggesting the effects should be interpreted cautiously as well.
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This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (R01 DA014694; T32MH018261).
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Folk, J.B., Tangney, J.P., Stuewig, J.B. (2021). A Longitudinal Examination of Women’s Criminal Behavior During the 7 Years After Release from Jail. In: Poehlmann-Tynan, J., Dallaire, D. (eds) Children with Incarcerated Mothers. SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67599-8_6
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