Examining Change in Family Conflict and Family Violence After Release From Prison

Abstract

This study examines changes in family conflict and violence among a sample of adult men after release from prison. Using longitudinal panel data on 1,282 men in the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative, cross-lagged dynamic fixed-effects panel data models are used to examine factors that relate to family conflict and family violence perpetrated by men after release from prison. Increased contact with family members during incarceration, as well as postrelease family support, related to decreased family conflict, even after accounting for family conflict during incarceration. Contact was unrelated to postrelease family violence. Interestingly, family violence prior to incarceration did not predict within-person changes in violence postrelease. Postrelease substance use and criminal offending significantly related to postrelease family violence. With incarceration affecting so many people nationwide, understanding how the experiences of incarceration and reentry impacts family health and well-being should be an important consideration for correctional policy and programming.

The Risk of Family Violence After Incarceration: An Integrative Review

“…Studies of samples who all experienced incarceration (Freeland Braun, 2012; McKay et al, 2018a; 2018b; Stansfield et al, 2020) all focused on incarcerated men (regardless of prior offense category) and testing whether the releasee perpetrated any new family violence, broadly defined. The one exception was a recent study by Mowen and Fisher (2019) that used a sample of juveniles within the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) data to examine new family violence incidents perpetrated by juveniles.…”

“…Possible responses ranged along a 6-point scale (0 = never , 1 = once , 2 = a few times , 3 = about once a month , 4 = a couple of times a month , 5 = once a week , and 6 = several times a week ). For the 1,282 former violent offenders in Stansfield and colleagues’ (2020) analysis of the SVORI data, the frequency of family violence postrelease was reported, with an average of 1.4 corresponding to between “once” and “a few times.” It is worth noting that the preincarceration prevalence of family violence in that study corresponded to about “once a week.” Given the reduction in occurrence, the authors caution that this could be a relatively low count based on people underreporting family violence in follow-up interviews, but the average is consistent with the other existing datasets that include pre- and postincarceration family violence. One of these datasets is the Returning Home study (Yahner & Visher, 2008), which finds similar trends in family violence whereby postrelease family violence levels (reported by 10% of individuals) are significantly lower than preincarceration family violence (29%).…”

“…This was the method preferred by four of the 16 quantitative studies. These analyses showed that, even after controlling for preincarceration family violence and prior criminal history, within-individual changes postrelease contributed to a heightened risk of family violence (McKay et al, 2018a; 2018b; Mowen & Fisher, 2019; Stansfield et al, 2020; Wakefield, 2015), including changes in family conflict (criticism and fighting with family) during and after release from prison (Mowen & Fisher, 2019), relationship dissolution (McKay et al, 2018a; 2018b), and substance use after release from prison (Stansfield et al, 2020).…”

“…Our review of significant risk factors highlighted the importance of intraindividual changes in family conflict, substance use, and relationship quality after the release of a partner from prison. Relatedly, the protective factors identified in the quantitative studies included substance use treatment in prison (Freeland Braun, 2012), healthy male relationship beliefs, women’s higher conflict resolution skills and women’s reports that their partners rarely became jealous (McKay et al, 2018a), in addition to older age of the person incarcerated (Bell et al, 2013; Freeland Braun, 2012; Stansfield et al, 2020; Wakefield, 2015). In other quantitative studies, evidence of protective factors entailed supporting and strengthening family relationships.…”

The Effect of Individual Characteristics and Supervision Experiences on the Perceived Quality of the Supervision Relationship

“…Finally, consistent with prior research utilizing the SVORI data, we include a series of variables related to the individual's criminal and correctional history (see, for example, Alward et al, 2020;Mowen et al, 2020;Stansfield et al, 2020). Given that previous research has found criminal and correctional history variables to be predictive of reentry outcomes (Makarios et al, 2010;Spivak & Damphousse, 2006), we include these measures to explore their potential influence on the supervision relationship.…”