Abstract: A Population-Level Examination of Maternal Incarceration (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

Schedule:

Friday, January 12, 2018: 5:37 PM

Liberty BR Salon K (ML 4) (Marriott Marquis Washington DC)

* noted as presenting author

John Prindle, PhD, Research Faculty, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Andrea Lane Eastman, MA, PhD Candidate, Research Assistant, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Qianwei Zhao, MSW, PhD Candidate, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Lindsey Palmer, MSW, PhD Student, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Background and Purpose:

The U.S. has the largest and fast-growing population of incarcerated females. Prior to incarceration, mothers are more likely to be the sole caregivers and 77% of mother prisoners reported living with their children in the month before arrest. Close mother-child relationships predict successful reintegration for women ex-offenders and positive developmental outcomes among the children. Statistics concerning the number of incarcerated women who are mothers can be challenging to establish. Corrections departments do not reliably collect information on the parental status of incarcerated individuals. Previous attempts at understanding the number and characteristics of incarcerated mothers have relied largely on self-report surveys with samples of unknown generalizability. The current study is the first examination of maternal incarceration in the U.S. that used administrative registry data.

Methods:

We extracted 20,700 criminal justice records from the California Department of Corrections concerning all women in state prison between 2010 and 2012. To identify all incarcerated women who had given birth, records were probabilistically linked to roughly 7.5 million vital birth records dating back to 1999. Linkages were based on a combination of unique (e.g., SSN) and non-unique (e.g., name, date of birth) personal identifiers common to both files. After linkages were completed, data were de-identified for analysis. χ² tests were used to examine bivariate group differences between parous (mothers) and nulliparous (women who had not given birth) women. A multinomial logistic regression model was specified to examine offense types for parous and nulliparous women.

Results:

We identified 45% of our population of incarcerated women gave birth between 1999 and 2012, with one third having two birth events. Parous women were more likely to experience two or more incarceration episodes but the episodes tend to be shorter in duration than nulliparous women. Nearly all births that occurred during incarceration we among women younger than age 35. About two-thirds of women who gave birth in prison were missing paternity on the birth record compared to a third of women who gave birth prior to incarceration. Analysis of trends did not reveal differences in rates of incarceration across the two groups of women. In comparison to violent offenses, parous women were more likely to be incarcerated for theft (RR = 1.19; 95% CI = 1.09, 1.30; p<.001). There were no differences for drug or other crimes.

Conclusions and Implications:

This study is the first to link criminal justice and birth record data as a population-level method for identifying the number of parous, incarcerated women. Although collected for non-research purposes, administrative registry data provides a full, population-based census of individuals in a system at a specific time point, and it can also help avoid self-report bias that exist among survey data or personal interviews. Findings indicate a significant number of parous women are entering the corrections system. Knowledge concerning the number of incarcerated women who are also mothers can assist administrators and policymakers in managing resources needed by families, promote positive reintegration outcomes among women ex-prisoners, and alleviate the collateral impacts of maternal incarceration on children.