A Peer-Facilitated Violence Prevention Program for Women in Prison: An Experimental Study

The literature has shown a strong correlation between victimization and violence. Victimization and violence often continue for women while in custody, as they may suffer sexual and physical abuse from interpersonal relationships they have formed in prison, from conflict with other residents, and from custody officers. As the majority of treatment programs for violence and the associated research have been focused on men, it is vital that services are also oriented to the needs of women who perpetrate violence. Beyond Violence (BV) was developed to fill the gap in violence prevention programming for justice-involved women with histories of violence victimization and perpetration. This current study builds upon the previous research on BV by employing an experimental design to rigorously assess the impact of the peer-facilitated model of the BV program on mental health and anger/aggression among women in prison. Women volunteered for the intervention and the study. Participants were randomized to either the 20-session BV condition or to a waitlist control (WC) condition. All 145 participants were asked to complete a pre-intervention (Time 1) and post-intervention (Time 2) survey that included validated measures to assess for depression, anxiety, PTSD, anger/aggression, and emotional dysregulation. Preliminary analyses of the background characteristics and pre-intervention outcome scores showed no significant differences between the groups at Time 1, indicating that randomization was successful. Separate ANCOVAs were run for 13 outcomes measured using the pre-test scores from study participants as the covariate and group assignment as the independent variable. Hypotheses were predominantly supported, and findings showed that the BV participants had significant reductions in the majority of the outcome measures at the post-intervention assessment when compared to the WC participants. Future research should continue to explore the advantages of peer-facilitated program models and should incorporate post-release outcomes to assess change over time.