A Qualitative Comparison of Battered Women’s Perceptions of Service Needs and Barriers Across Correctional and Shelter Contexts

• DOI: 10.1177/0093854813515238
• Author: Carol E. Jordan,Letonia Jones,Adam J. Pritchard
• Published date: 01 July 2014
• Date: 01 July 2014

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2014, Vol. 41, No. 7, July, 2014, 844 –861.

DOI: 10.1177/0093854813515238

© 2014 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

844

A QUALITATIVE COMPARISON OF BATTERED

WOMEN’S PERCEPTIONS OF SERVICE NEEDS

AND BARRIERS ACROSS CORRECTIONAL AND

SHELTER CONTEXTS

ADAM J. PRITCHARD

University of Central Florida

CAROL E. JORDAN

University of Kentucky

LETONIA JONES

Kentucky Domestic Violence Association

This study explores the confluence of victimization and incarceration to contribute to the understanding of battered women’s

experience of the criminal justice system. Building on previous qualitative research investigating pathways to incarceration

for battered women, this study utilizes qualitative data from 10 focus-group interviews to investigate and compare battered

women’s experiences with victimization, help-seeking, and perceptions of incarceration across four different site types: jails,

prisons, shelters, and post-release support groups. The study makes comparisons across these sites and identifies site-specific

service needs and perceived barriers to meeting these needs. These data also reveal three ways battered women perceive

incarceration to operate with respect to their service needs: as a symbolic barrier, as a potential opportunity, and as a structural

barrier. The association of these divergent perspectives on incarceration with specific locations in the criminal justice system

and the implications for targeted interventions based on these findings are discussed.

Keywords: intimate partner violence; battered women; incarcerated women; help-seeking; incarceration

INTRODUCTION

Many women who have experienced intimate partner violence have a complex and

often contradictory relationship with the criminal justice system. For some outside

observers, the prevailing belief about battered women’s contact with the criminal justice

system is that these women interface with the system primarily as the victims of violence.

However, research involving women who have experienced intimate partner violence

reveals that for many battered women, the same factors that contribute to their vulnerabil-

ity to violence (e.g., poverty) make them more likely to also be involved in criminal

activities. Some have even argued that abuse itself can be a risk factor for criminal

AUTHORS’ NOTE: The authors are indebted to the survivors of domestic violence who shared their experi-

ences during this study and to Sherry Currens, Executive Director of the Kentucky Domestic Violence

Association. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Adam Pritchard, University of

Central Florida, 1519 Clearlake Road, Bldg 3, Cocoa, FL 32922, USA; e-mail: adam.pritchard@ucf.edu.

515238CJBXXX10.1177/0093854813515238Criminal Justice and BehaviorPritchard et al. / Battered Women’s Service Needs

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Pritchard et al. / BATTERED WOMEN’S SERVICE NEEDS 845

offending (e.g., Bliss, Cook, & Kaslow, 2006). The result of this confluence of factors is

that a majority of incarcerated women may hold the dual status of abuse survivor and

criminal offender (Greenfield & Snell, 1999). Despite the availability of services for vic-

tims of violence and abuse, when battered women are incarcerated, their status as a

“deserving” victim may become suspect, and their ability to access helping services may

be presently, if not permanently, inhibited. While proponents of deterrence models of

incarceration expect incarceration and its associated stigma to discourage criminal behav-

ior, for women who have experienced abuse, the experience of incarceration may instead

serve to discourage or even prevent them from accessing much-needed services to break

the cycle of abuse, poverty, and recidivism.

Research on how women who have experienced intimate partner violence become

involved with the criminal justice system examines a variety of topics depending on how

these women come into contact with authorities. One such point of interface is as a victim

of violence; however, representative national studies have found that women only seek help

from the criminal justice system in a minority of cases when the perpetrator of physical or

sexual violence is an intimate partner (Bachman, 2000; Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). Instead,

many battered women have primary contact with the criminal justice system through osten-

sibly unrelated forms of non-violent criminal offending, including being charged for

offenses related to alcohol abuse, drugs, or prostitution. Perhaps most contradictory to the

stereotype of a battered woman as a victim is when female abuse survivors are incarcerated

for violent offenses, of which the most serious violent crimes are frequently committed

against an abusive partner. Recently, researchers have begun to contextualize these types of

experiences into an ecological or life-course model, which suggests that there exist gender-

specific “pathways” linking victimization to incarceration for certain types of female

offenders.

The present study explores the intersection of victimization and incarceration in order to

contribute to a more complete understanding of battered women’s experience of the crimi-

nal justice system. This study utilizes qualitative methods to investigate battered women’s

experiences with victimization, help-seeking, and perceptions of incarceration across a

variety of situational contexts: women seeking shelter services, women incarcerated in met-

ropolitan and non-metropolitan jails, women incarcerated in state-run and private prisons,

and women participating in a post-incarceration support group. This study analyzes data

from 10 focus-group interviews and identifies three distinct ways in which these women’s

perceptions of incarceration operate as a barrier to their own self-determination and help-

seeking for issues related to their experiences of violence: as a symbolic barrier, as a poten-

tial opportunity, and as a structural barrier.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The direct impacts of intimate partner violence on women and the role of the criminal

justice system in addressing intimate partner violence are well documented. Intimate part-

ner violence contributes to everything from acute injuries (Campbell, 2002; Sheridan &

Nash, 2007) to the risk of death at the hands of an intimate partner; research finds that over

3,000 women annually lose their lives to homicide (Puzzanchera, Chamberlin, & Kang,

2013), and when a woman is killed, the offender is usually her intimate partner (Jordan,

Campbell, & Follingstad, 2010). A woman’s murder is often precipitated by her attempts to