Differences in Adverse Childhood Experiences and Coercive Control among Native American and Non-Native American Justice-Involved Women

ABSTRACT

The purposes of the current study are two-fold. First, we examine how ACEs influence being a victim of IPV coercive control among Native American (n = 92) and non-Native American (n = 263) justice-involved women using data from the 2014 Oklahoma Study of Mother’s and Their Children. Second, because little research exists on these relationships, we explore how these patterns may vary among Native American and non-Native American women. Our findings suggest that there is not only a clear link between ACEs and coercive control among justice-involved women, but also that these relationships vary between Native American and non-Native American women.

KEYWORDS:

• ACEs
• IPV
• coercive control
• Native American women
• prisoners

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Many official reports rely on racial/ethnic identities compiled from administrative reports/data. However, some research suggests that statistics (like these) may grossly underestimate Native American identities among justice-involved women. For example, Abril (2003) found that while official data indicated that there were only two “Native American” women prisoners in the Ohio Reformatory for Women, her own research revealed that 255 women prisoners indicated Native American heritage.

2. Researchers were present during the administration of the survey to answer any clarification questions asked by participants. For more information about this study also see Sharp, Jones, & McLeod, 2014.

3. Although previous literature suggests that a high accumulation of ACEs, five or more, significantly increases the likelihood of illicit drug use in comparison with fewer ACEs (Friestad et al., 2014; Sharp, 2014), we explored this idea further in the current study. Specifically, we created variables capturing increasing accumulation of ACEs (one or more, two or more, three or more, etc., up to 10) to identify if “five or more” was appropriately representative of high accumulation of ACEs. Our analyses suggest a slight plateauing effect at around five ACEs. Thus, our findings support past work indicating that “five or more” represents a high accumulation of ACEs that likely associated with cumulative deleterious impacts in the lives of incarcerated Native American women.

4. The variance for the coercive threats of harm index was 16.06 with a mean score of 3.65. The variance for the coercive demands index was 15.95 with a mean score of 4.27.

5. There were no statistically significant differences between the basic demographics of Native American and non-Native American subsamples. In Oklahoma’s women prisoner population, 40% were incarcerated for crimes against persons, 37% for alcohol-or drug related offenses, and 23% for property-related offenses. Our subsamples of women prisoners in Oklahoma closely match Oklahoma’s women prisoner general population.