The Relationship Between Interpersonal Victimization and Women’s Criminal Sentencing: A Latent Class Analysis

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