Assessing Long-Term Outcomes of an Intervention Designed for Pregnant Incarcerated Women

Abstract

Objectives: Approximately 25% of women are pregnant or postpartum when they enter prison. This study assesses a system-level intervention that prevented the separation of mothers and infants at birth, allowing them to reside together in an alternative community setting. Method: Longitudinal analysis of several state-level administrative databases compares the intervention (n = 48) group to the ‘‘treatment as usual’’ group (n = 36), over a 10-year period. Results: Preliminary analyses reveal few between-group differences and illuminate the presence of informal caregivers that were outside the scope of our data. Conclusions: Although 70% of the children remain legally attached to their mothers, further study is required to account for data limitations and to determine whether time to negative events differed between groups.