Intervening with Women in Jail around Alcohol and Substance Abuse During Preparation for Community Reentry

Abstract

The Women and Jails Project involved a jail in-reach brief screening and feedback intervention for women experiencing problems with alcohol or other substances. The screening and brief intervention (SBI) protocol involved the application of an evidence-informed screening interview (the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test-Including Drugs, or AUDIT-12) and the provision of personalized feedback on each woman's screening results, delivered in a brief motivational interview format. Comparisons of interview data while incarcerated and 2 months postrelease indicated significantly greater improvement in alcohol and other substance use screening results (lower AUDIT-12 scores) among women randomly assigned to intervention versus treatment as usual groups. This greater improvement could not be attributed to greater treatment engagement because that difference was not significant. The authors discuss practice and future research implications of the jail in-reach intervention and providing resource information to women preparing for community reentry.

KEYWORDS:

• Women
• jail in-reach intervention
• alcohol and substance abuse screening
• motivational interviewing
• SBI
• community reentry

Notes

This project was supported by Grant No. 2006-DD-BX-0195 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the authors and do not represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The authors wish to thank our student interns and project assistants, Hannah Borden, Sheryl Dean, Joe Greco, Katie Hamm, Liz Lincoln, Jessica McBride, Melissa Meddaugh, Veronica Rogers, and Kristy Tweedy, our project coordinator Ms. Barbara Teske-Young, as well as staff from the Benedict Center, members of the project's community advisory coalition, and the many women who participated in the study at a particularly difficult period in their lives.

¹This variable has been log transformed to account for positive skew.

²Asked at 2-month follow-up interview.

³This variable has been log transformed to account for positive skew and reflects the number of “a lot” responses on ABTI.

¹A type II error would suggest accepting that there is no significant effect when, in fact, an effect is present in this population, that is, a “false negative” result.

** denotes p ≤ .01

* denotes p ≤ .05

^† denotes p ≤ .10.

** indicates p ≤ .01

* indicates p ≤ .05.