Post-Incarceration Partner Violence: Examining the Social Context of Victimization To Inform Victim Services and Prevention

The study used newly available secondary data from the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering (MFS-IP) study and three other publicly available secondary data sources. From these sources, the study developed an understanding of the social contexts of post-incarceration partner-violence victimization. This report provides details on these sources. MFS-IP participants perceived four mechanisms by which the contexts of their lives shaped more proximal contexts, which in turn shaped their experiences of partner violence: 1) economic exclusion and poverty, 3) social isolation and disempowerment, 3) the erosion of trust and intimacy, and 4) traumatic violence exposures. The current study also focuses on issues in help-seeking among victims in couples affected by incarceration. The study concludes with an analysis of how these findings pertain to victim services for those impacted by post-incarceration intimate-partner violence. Also discussed are the implications of the findings for efforts to prevent primary and secondary violence. These discussions apply an improved understanding of the social context for partner violence. 8 tables, 2 figures, and 85 references