An Empirical Test of the Sexual Violence to Prison Pipeline Among a Longitudinal Sample of Women

• In Event: Considerations of Race and Gender in Juvenile Outcomes

Abstract

The current study seeks to capitalize on a longitudinal study of women with histories in the juvenile legal system to test the sexual violence to prison pipeline theory, which has thus far been tested retrospectively. The participants in this study are 166 females who were followed for the past 18-24 years. Participants were 15 years old on average at study enrollment and 35 years on average at the most recent wave of data collection. In adolescence, the females were detained in locked settings for an average of four times, amounting to an average of 193 days spent in incarcerated during adolescence. And 35.5% later experienced incarceration in the adult correctional system. Sixty percent of the women experienced sexual trauma prior to age 12. Forty-one percent of the sample experienced attempted rape as an adolescent which was significantly associated with number of days incarcerated as an adolescent (r = .17, p < .05). Of those who experienced sexual trauma in adolescence before age 12 (n=100), 37% also experienced incarceration as an adult. Findings support the sexual violence to prison pipeline theory and have implications for current efforts to reduce or eliminate the incarceration of young girls and women.

Authors

• Carly Bailey Dierkhising, California State University, Los Angeles

• Maria Schweer-Collins, Iowa State University