Family violence, including both child maltreatment and spouse abuse, is a public health concern in both military and civilian populations. However, there is limited knowledge concerning violence in military families relative to civilian families. This literature review critically reviews studies that examine child maltreatment and spouse abuse among military families and compares family violence in military versus nonmilitary populations. Physical abuse and neglect compose the majority of the reported and substantiated cases of child maltreatment in military families, followed by sexual abuse and emotional abuse. On the other hand, physical abuse represents more than 90% of all substantiated cases of spouse abuse in military families, followed by emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse. Mixed results were found when comparing military and nonmilitary families in terms of child maltreatment and spouse abuse, in part because of a lack of consistency in policies and practices between military and civilian agencies.
Although substance abuse has consistently been linked to child maltreatment, no study to date has described the extent of substance abuse among child maltreatment offenders within the military. Analysis of U.S. Army data on all substantiated incidents of parental child maltreatment committed between 2000 and 2004 by active duty soldiers found that 13% of offenders were noted to have been abusing alcohol or illicit drugs at the time of their child maltreatment incident. The odds of substance abuse were increased for offenders who committed child neglect or emotional abuse, but were reduced for child physical abuse. The odds of offender substance abuse nearly tripled in child maltreatment incidents that also involved co-occurring spouse abuse. Findings include a lack of association between offender substance abuse and child maltreatment recurrence, possibly because of the increased likelihood of removal of offenders from the home when either substance abuse or spouse abuse were documented.
In response to the growing need to effectively manage the large numbers of released prisoners returning into the community, the Office of Justice Programs launched the Reentry Court Initiative (RCI). Nine sites were identified and charged with developing strategies to improve the tracking and supervision of offenders upon release and providing the services necessary to help offenders reconnect with their families and the community. The current article describes the RCI programs. Telephone interviews were conducted with key site contacts from each site. Site visits were conducted to three sites, at which semistructured interviews were held with 28 key stakeholders, including judges, program directors, supervision officers, case managers, and program participants. The sites employed diverse approaches in establishing their programs, with the judicial branch maintaining programmatic authority in five of the eight operational sites, and administrative law judges and/or parole boards serving as the legal authority in the remaining three. All RCI programs required regular court appearances, although not all established a specialized reentry court docket. The majority of sites appeared to offer comprehensive services to their program participants, with case management provided either through a specialized case manager or the supervision officer. Several barriers were common across the RCI sites, particularly the difficulties in obtaining employment, and appropriate, affordable housing for program participants.
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