Unintended Pregnancy and Violence among Women and Men in the Criminal Justice System

Background: While the association between women's unintended pregnancy (UP) and intimate partner violence (IPV) is understood, less attention has been paid to community violence and its impact on both women and men who, through their partners, experience UP. Our goal was to examine the contribution of individual and community violence on UP with a sample of the 12 million women and men who pass through the criminal justice system each year.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey with 204 women and 204 men incarcerated in two county jails in Kansas City. Individual level independent variables were past year IPV, violence-related injury, and sexual or physical abuse before age 16; community level independent variables were fear of neighborhood violence or personal/ family victimization by neighborhood violence. We used logistic regression to assess the relationship between independent variables and gender differences in predictors of UP.

Findings: 52.8% of women and 47.2% of men experienced a pregnancy that was unintended. Women with a UP were 2.22 times more likely (CI 1.15-4.32) to have experienced recent IPV; men with a UP were 4.5 times more likely (CI 1.15-17.6) to have had a violence-related injury, 2.24 more likely (CI 1.06-4.75) to be victimized by neighborhood violence, and 0.64 more likely (CI 0.42-0.99) to fear violence in their neighborhood.

Conclusion: Violence has gender-specific influences on UP. Short length of stay and rapid turnover of jail populations (as opposed to prison) provide a substantial opportunity for community-based interventions to reduce UP.