Experiences of Interpersonal Violence and Criminal Legal Control

Incarcerated women are substantially more likely to have experienced interpersonal violence than are women in the general population. Some scholars argue that increased likelihoods of committing crime among survivors of violence explain this association. However, previous research fails to control for measures of social vulnerability. Thus, the relationship between experiencing interpersonal violence and experiencing imprisonment may not be a causal one. To examine the links between social vulnerability, experiences of interpersonal violence, and experiences of incarceration, the authors analyze both quantitative and qualitative data. The authors’ findings suggest that social vulnerability—especially being Black, having a parent who has been incarcerated, and being unemployed at the time of the arrest—does mediate the relationship between experiencing violence, using drugs, and believing that interpersonal violence contributed to one’s imprisonment. However, even when controlling for social vulnerability, real effects of experiences of violence on both women’s drug use and their understandings of the causes of their imprisonment remain.