Examining the Relationship Between Childhood Victimization,High-Risk Behaviors,and Health Among Criminal Justice-Involved Women

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a conceptual model of the pathways through which childhood victimization influences adult health outcomes. Specifically, measures of high-risk behaviors, tobacco use, alcohol use, illegal substance use, and HIV risk behaviors were hypothesized to mediate the relationship between childhood victimization and adult physical health. The sample consisted of 406 women on probation and parole with a history of childhood victimization in Jefferson County, Kentucky. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationship between childhood victimization, high-risk behaviors, and physical health outcomes. The findings indicate partial mediation, with health risk behaviors accounting for 12.5% of the variance in the relationship between childhood victimization and health outcomes. Implications for policy and treatment practice in the health and criminal justice arena are discussed.

Keywords

childhood victimization high-risk behavior criminal justice health

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Anderson

T. L.

, Rosay

A. B.

, Saum

(2002). The impact of drug use and crime involvement on health problems among female drug offenders. The Prison Journal, 82, 50–68.

Bentler

(1990). Comparative fit indexes in structural models. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 238–246.

Bloom

, Owen

, Covington

(2003). Gender-responsive strategies: Research, practice, and guiding principles for women offenders. Washington, DC: National Institute of Corrections.

Bloom

, Owen

, Covington

(2004). Women offenders and the gendered effects of public policy. Review of Policy Research, 21, 31–48.

Briere

, Jordan

C. E.

(2004). Violence against women: Outcome complexity and implications for assessment and treatment. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 19, 1252–1276.

Brown

G. T.

(2006). Teachers’ conceptions of assessment: Validation of an abridged version. Psychological Reports, 99, 166–170.

Browne

, Miller

, Maguin

(1999). Prevalence and severity of lifetime physical and sexual victimization among incarcerated women. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 22, 301–322.

Campbell

, Greeson

M. R.

, Bybee

, Raja

(2008). The co-occurrence of childhood sexual abuse, adult sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and sexual harassment: A mediational model of posttraumatic stress disorder and physical health outcomes. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76, 194–207.

Chesney-Lind

, Pasko

(2004). The female offender: Girls, women and crime (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

10.

Coker

A. L.

, Watkins

K. W.

, Smith

P. H.

, Brandt

H. M.

(2003). Social support reduces the impact of partner violence on health: Application of structural equation models. Preventive Medicine, 37, 259–267.

11.

Covington

(2003). A woman’s journey home: Challenges for female offenders. In Travis

, Waul

(Eds.), Prisoners once removed: The impact of incarceration and reentry on children, families, and communities (pp. 67–103). Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.

12.

Covington

S. S.

(2007). Women and the criminal justice system. Women’s Health Issues, 17, 180–182.

13.

Covington

S. S.

(2008). Women and addiction: A trauma-informed approach. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 40, 377–385.

14.

Currie

(1994). Reckoning: Drugs, the cities, and the American future. New York, NY: Hill and Wang.

15.

Dillon

W. R.

, Kumar

, Mulani

(1987). Offending estimates in covariance structure analysis: Comments on the causes of and solutions to Heywood cases. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 126–135.

16.

Dumont

D. M.

, Brockmann

, Dickman

, Alexander

, Rich

J. D.

(2012). Public health and the epidemic of incarceration. Annual Review of Public Health, 33, 325–339.

17.

el-Bassel

, Ivanoff

, Schilling

R. F.

, Gilbert

, Borne

, Chen

D. R.

(1995). Preventing HIV/AIDS in drug-abusing incarcerated women through skills building and social support enhancement: Preliminary outcomes. Social Work Research, 19, 131–141.

18.

Freudenberg

(2002). Adverse effects of U.S. jail and prison policies on the health and well-being of women of color. American Journal of Public Health, 92, 1895–1899.

19.

Glaze

L. E.

, Bonczar

T. P.

(2011). Probation and parole in the United States, 2010 (NCJ 236019). Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

20.

Greenfield

L. A.

, Snell

T. L.

(1999). Women offenders (NCJ 175688). Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

21.

Grella

C. E.

(2008). From generic to gender-responsive treatment: Changes in social policies, treatment services, and outcomes of women in substance abuse treatment. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 40, 327–343.

22.

Grella

C. E.

, Stein

J. A.

, Greenwell

(2005). Associations among childhood trauma, adolescent problem behaviors, and adverse adult outcomes in substance abusing women offenders. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 19, 43–53.

23.

Hagan

, Coleman

J. P.

(2001). Returning captives of the American war on drugs: Issues of community and family reentry. Crime & Delinquency, 47, 352–367.

24.

Haller

D. L.

, Miles

D. R.

(2004). Personality disturbances in drug-dependent women: Relationship to childhood abuse. American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 30, 269–286.

25.

Harris

, Falot

R. D.

(Eds.). (2001). Using trauma theory to design service systems. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

26.

, Bentler

P. M.

(1998). Fit indices in covariance structure modeling: Sensitivity to underparameterized model misspecification. Psychological Methods, 3, 424–453.

27.

Iguchi

M. Y.

, Bell

, Ramchand

R. N.

, Fain

(2005). How criminal system racial disparities may translate into health disparities. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, 16, 48–56.

28.

Jordan

B. K.

, Schlenger

W. E.

, Fairbank

J. A.

, Caddell

J. M.

(1996). Prevalence of psychiatric disorders among incarcerated women: II. Convicted felons entering prison. Archives of General Psychiatry, 53, 513–519.

29.

Kendall-Tackett

(2013). Treating the lifetime health effects of childhood victimization (2nd ed.). Kingston, NJ: Civic Research Institute.

30.

Kenny

D. A.

, Kashy

D. A.

, Bolger

(1998). Data analysis in social psychology. In Gilbert

D. T.

, Fiske

S. T.

, Lindzey

(Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1, 4th ed., pp. 233–265). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

31.

Kline

R. B.

(1998). Software review: Software programs for structural equation modeling: Amos, EQS, and LISREL. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 16, 343–364.

32.

Kline

R. B.

(2011). Principles and practice of structural equation modeling (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford.

33.

Massoglia

(2008a). Incarceration as exposure: The prison, infectious disease, and other stress-related illnesses. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 49, 56–71.

34.

Massoglia

(2008b). Incarceration, health, and racial disparities in health. Law & Society Review, 42, 275–306.

35.

McDaniels-Wilson

, Belknap

(2008). The extensive sexual violation and sexual abuse histories of incarcerated women. Violence Against Women, 14, 1090–1127.

36.

McHorney

C. A.

, Ware

J. E.

Jr. , Lu

J. F.

, Sherbourne

C. D.

(1994). The MOS 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36): III. Tests of data quality, scaling assumptions, and reliability across diverse patient groups. Medical Care, 32, 40–66.

37.

Messina

, Grella

(2006). Childhood trauma and women’s health outcomes in a California prison population. American Journal of Public Health, 96, 1842–1848.

38.

Messina

, Grella

, Burdon

, Prendergast

(2007). Childhood adverse events and current traumatic distress: A comparison of men and women drug-dependent prisoners. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 34, 1385–1401.

39.

Messina

N. P.

, Burdon

W. M.

, Prendergast

M. L.

(2003). Assessing the needs of women in institutional therapeutic communities. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 37, 89–106.

40.

Minton

T. D.

(2013). Jail inmates at midyear 2012-Statistical tables (NCJ 241264). Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

41.

Muthén

L. K.

, Muthén

B. O.

(1998–2015). Mplus user’s guide (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Author.

42.

Nova Research Company. (2003). QDS: Questionnaire Development System (Version 2.1 Manual). Retrieved from http://www.novaresearch.com/products/QDS/index.cfm

43.

Olofsson

, Lindqvist

, Shaw

B. A.

, Danielsson

(2012). Long-term health consequences of violence exposure in adolescence: A 26-year prospective study. BMC Public Health, 12, 411.

44.

Peters

C. O.

, Enders

(2002). A primer for the estimation of structural equation models in the presence of missing data: Maximum likelihood algorithms. Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing, 11, 81–95.

45.

Pew Center on the States. (2009). One in 31: The long reach of American corrections. Washington, DC: The Pew Charitable Trusts.

46.

Preacher

K. J.

, Hayes

A. F.

(2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 879–891.

47.

Richie

B. E.

(2001). Challenges incarcerated women face as they return to their communities: Findings from life history interviews. Crime & Delinquency, 47, 368–389.

48.

Salisbury

E. J.

, Van Voorhis

(2009). Gendered pathways: A quantitative investigation of women probationers’ paths to incarceration. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 36, 541–566.

49.

Singer

M. I.

, Bussey

, Song

L. Y.

, Lunghofer

(1995). The psychosocial issues of women serving time in jail. Social Work, 40, 103–113.

50.

Smith

B. V.

, Simonian

, Yarussi

(2006). The health concerns of incarcerated women—Part 1: Profiles, chronic diseases, and conditions. Women, Girls & Criminal Justice, 7, 33–34, 39–45.

51.

Springer

K. W.

, Sheridan

, Kuo

, Carnes

(2003). The long-term health outcomes of childhood abuse. An overview and a call to action. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 18, 864–870.

52.

Springer

K. W.

, Sheridan

, Kuo

, Carnes

(2007). Long-term physical and mental health consequences of childhood physical abuse: Results from a large population-based sample of men and women. Child Abuse & Neglect, 31, 517–530.

53.

Steiger

J. H.

(1990). Structural model evaluation and modification: An interval estimation approach. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 25, 173–180.

54.

Steptoe

, Wardle

(2004). Health-related behaviour: Prevalence and links with disease. In Kaptein

, Weinman

(Eds.), Health psychology (1st ed., pp. 21–51). Oxford, England: Blackwell.

55.

Stewart

A. L.

, Hays

R. D.

, Ware

J. E.

Jr. (1988). The MOS short-form general health survey. Reliability and validity in a patient population. Medical Care, 26, 724–735.

56.

Straus

M. A.

, Hamby

S. L.

, Boney-McCoy

, Sugarman

D. B.

(1996). The revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2): Development and preliminary psychometric data. Journal of Family Issues, 17, 283–316.

57.

Tabachnick

B. G.

, Fidell

L. S.

(2007). Experimental designs using ANOVA. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.

58.

Tajima

E. A.

, Herrenkohl

T. I.

, Huang

, Whitney

S. D.

(2004). Measuring child maltreatment: A comparison of prospective parent reports and retrospective adolescent reports. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 74, 424–435.

59.

Thompson

M. P.

, Arias

, Basile

K. C.

, Desai

(2002). The association between childhood physical and sexual victimization and health problems in adulthood in a nationally representative sample of women. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 17, 1115–1129.

60.

Tjaden

, Thoennes

(1998). Prevalence, incidence, and consequences of violence against women: Findings from the National Violence against Women Survey (NCJ 172837). Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.

61.

Tjaden

, Thoennes

(2000). Full report of the prevalence, incidence, and consequences of violence against women: Findings from the National Violence against Women Survey (NCJ 183781). Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.

62.

Tolman

R. M.

(1999). The validation of the psychological maltreatment of women inventory. Violence and Victims, 14, 25–37.

63.

Tucker

L. R.

, Lewis

(1973). A reliability coefficient for maximum likelihood factor analysis. Psychometrika, 38, 1–10.

64.

Wang

, Li

, Barnett

, Zhao

, Stanton

(2012). Risk and protective factors for depression symptoms among children affected by HIV/AIDS in rural China: A structural equation modeling analysis. Social Science & Medicine, 74, 1435–1443.

65.

Ware

J. E.

Jr. (1987). Standards for validating health measures: Definition and content. Journal of Chronic Diseases, 40, 473–480.

66.

Ware

J. E.

Jr. , Sherbourne

C. D.

(1992). The MOS 36-item short-form health survey (SF-36): I. Conceptual framework and item selection. Medical Care, 30, 473–483.

67.

Wideman

T. H.

, Sullivan

M. J.

(2011). Differential predictors of the long-term levels of pain intensity, work disability, healthcare use, and medication use in a sample of workers’ compensation claimants. Pain, 152, 376–383.

68.

Widom

C. S.

, Ames

M. A.

(1994). Criminal consequences of childhood sexual victimization. Child Abuse & Neglect, 18, 303–318.

69.

Wolff

, Shi

(2012). Childhood and adult trauma experiences of incarcerated persons and their relationship to adult behavioral health problems and treatment. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 9, 1908–1926.

70.

C. Y.

, Muthén

B. O.

(2002, April). Evaluation of model fit indices for latent variable models with categorical and continuous outcomes. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA.