Session: Research That Informs HIV Prevention Intervention Among Women in the Criminal Justice System (Society for Social Work and Research 15th Annual Conference: Emerging Horizons for Social Work Research)

Women involved in the criminal justice (CJ) system, who now number more than one million, are among the most economically and socially disadvantaged populations in the U.S. One glaring hardship is their burden of HIV, as women in CJ settings display HIV rates 8-15 times the general population and even higher than their male counterparts. This HIV disparity is undoubtedly influenced by a number of risk factors that are overrepresented among CJ-involved women, including: histories of physical and sexual abuse, mental illnesses and drug/alcohol abuse, lack of employment supports and safe housing, and limited access to community resources. A distinctive stressor common to justice-involved women is their parental role: About 70% of CJ-involved women are mothers of young children resulting in an estimated 1.3 million minor children with a mother under CJ supervision. The multiple needs embodied in justice-involved women require an equally complex gender-specific approach to HIV prevention. However, there is a dearth of HIV prevention research which specifically addresses the complex needs of CJ-involved women.

This symposium highlights multiple methods of research with women at various stages of CJ involvement that will add to the knowledge base and inform HIV prevention interventions for CJ-involved women. Our first presentation is an epidemiologic investigation of high-risk sex partnerships among women in drug treatment, which underscores the role of continued drug use and CJ involvement in sexual risk-taking and their importance as targets of intervention. The second presentation employs qualitative interviews with formerly incarcerated women in order to better understand not only risk factors to HIV but dynamic and contextual issues which promote HIV risk behaviors. Our third presentation builds on a community based participatory research framework by engaging a group of female community consultants to shape the tailoring and multimedia development of an HIV prevention intervention targeting women under CJ supervision. These two studies demonstrate the importance of incorporating the oft-ignored voices of justice-involved women into gender and culturally relevant intervention delivery. Our final presentation reports preliminary findings from a novel parenting intervention for soon-to-be-released incarcerated mothers. The findings call attention to the interrelatedness of incarcerated women's needs, as the intervention demonstrated promising results on not only parenting skills but also HIV risk reduction.

Taken together, the presentations in this symposium provide a unified exploration into the multifaceted lives and HIV prevention needs of women in the CJ system. By discussing the import for HIV prevention interventions with this population to simultaneously address multiple levels of need, the symposium raises awareness of CJ-involved women as a critical population for social work intervention research. The presentations offer unique perspectives on how social work, which by nature embraces the complexity of persons and systems, has the potential to become a leading and innovative voice in HIV prevention research with CJ-affected populations. Together they highlight essential elements of HIV prevention intervention and provide guidance in the design of future large-scale intervention studies for this population.