Childhood Polyvictimization and Mental Health Issues among Incarcerated Women
Published:
| Author: Stephanie Kennedy, Annelise M. Mennicke, Rajib Paul
Results from a cluster analysis identified four unique childhood polyvictimization: Low Victimization, High Witnessing Violence, High Sexual Abuse, and Severe Polyvictimization. The odds of reporting suicidal ideation, psychosis, and dissociation were higher for women in the High Witnessing, High Sexual Abuse, and/or Severe Polyvictimization clusters compared to the Low Victimization cluster, although pairwise comparisons indicated no significant differences between the three higher-level polyvictimization clusters.
Category: Incarcerated Women, Trauma, Mental Health
‘I took care of my kids’: Mothering while incarcerated
Published:
| Author: Stephanie Kennedy, Annelise M. Mennicke, Chelsea Allen
Research on incarcerated parents often focuses on their children, which obscures incarcerated mothers’ needs related to health and wellness. The prison environment offers few opportunities to foster mother-child connection; most mothers never receive even one visit from their children. Incarcerated mothers contextually framed crime as protecting and providing for children and identified community-based and in-prison service gaps.
Category: Incarcerated Women
The Relationship Between Interpersonal Victimization and Women’s Criminal Sentencing: A Latent Class Analysis
Published:
| Author: Stephanie Kennedy, Annelise M. Mennicke, Megan Feely, Stephen Tripodi
Latent class analysis was used to identify subgroups of incarcerated women differentiated by experiences of child abuse and intimate partner violence victimization. Four classes were extracted—Low Victimization, Child Abuse, Lifetime Physical and Psychological Abuse, and Lifetime Sexual Abuse; classes were then related to current sentence length, holding criminological predictors constant. Women in the Child Abuse and Lifetime Sexual Abuse classes had significantly longer sentences, despite the lack of significant between-class differences on criminological predictors.
Category: Incarcerated Women, Trauma, Sentencing
“Behind every woman in prison is a man”: Incarcerated Women’s Perceptions of How We Can Better Help Them in the Context of Interpersonal Victimization
Published:
| Author: Stephanie Kennedy, Annelise M. Mennicke
Although women’s rates of incarceration have increased dramatically, the criminal justice system does not meet women’s unique needs. This article used qualitative methods to describe the responses of 113 incarcerated women to the following question: How can we better help women like you? Analyses focused on women’s experiences of victimization and highlighted how to address trauma in prison reform and abolition efforts.
Category: Trauma, Incarcerated Women
Evaluating Seeking Safety for Women in Prison: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Published:
| Author: Stephen Tripodi, Annelise M. Mennicke, Susan McCarter, Katie Ropes Berry
This study assessed the effectiveness of Seeking Safety on depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with incarcerated women.
Category: Incarcerated Women
Assessing Attitude and Reincarceration Outcomes Associated With In-Prison Domestic Violence Treatment Program Completion
Published:
| Author: Annelise M. Mennicke, Stephen Tripodi, Christopher Veeh, Dina Wilke, Stephanie Kennedy
Studies indicate that as many as 30%–56% of incarcerated men have perpetrated domestic violence, and that factors related to domestic violence perpetration are associated with long-term recidivism after release. The current study evaluates the effectiveness of an in-prison domestic violence treatment program called STOP and Change Direction to increase positive attitudes toward women, decrease levels of criminal thinking, and reduce general recidivism rates for program completers.