Substance Use Among Victimized Women on Probation and Parole

Abstract

Victimized women within the criminal justice system are an important group and understanding their substance use is critical. Substance use was examined among 406 victimized women on probation and parole in an urban community from 2010 to 2013. Ninety-three percent reported lifetime use of an illicit substance, whereas 58% and 45% reported use of at least one illicit substance in the past 2 years and 12 months, respectively. Among probationers, having been in a controlled environment was associated with a higher prevalence of illicit substance use as compared to parolees. Implications for practice, policy, and future research are discussed.

Keywords :

• women
• substance use
• women
• victimization
• probation
• parole

Notes

1 Actually, Reichert et al. (2010) found that 99% of the women in their sample of 217 women randomly selected from the population of female inmates in three Illinois prisons had experienced some form of lifetime victimization, a figure is significantly higher than prior research.

2 Intimate partner violence between same gender female partners is an important and understudied issue. The dynamics of intimate partner violence between same gender partners may be both similar to and distinct from violence between opposite gender partners. This, however, is an empirical question/issue. Furthermore, there was concern that inclusion of women who only had sex with other women would yield a subsample that was too small for meaningful analysis.

3 A complete list of questions used to assess victimization is available from the first author.

4 Prescription drug misuse was operationalized as ever using, “prescription drugs that were not prescribed to you, in excess of what was prescribed for you, and/or for recreational purposes.”

5 The following data are not reported in the table: 5.9% of the respondents reported no use of alcohol or illicit substances ever, 22.9% reported use of illicit substances only; 1.0% reported use of alcohol only and 70.2% reported use of both alcohol and illicit substances.

6 These analyses were conducted without consideration as to whether a woman had been in a controlled environment in the past 12 months or 2 years.

7 Based on posthoc analysis; not reported elsewhere in this paper.