Official Crime Rates of Participants in Trials of the Nurse-Family Partnership

The purpose of this study is to analyze official arrests, convictions, and sentencing outcomes for finger-printable crimes among mothers and their first-born children enrolled in three randomized controlled trials of the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP). The NFP is a program of prenatal and infancy (through age 2) home visiting by nurses for low-income mothers with no previous live births. Data on arrests, convictions, and sentencing will be collected to determine the extent to the program reduces official arrest rates among participants in the three original trials (Elmira , New York, 1977, N=400; Memphis, Tennessee, 1988, N= 1,138; and, Denver, Colorado, 1994, N=735), and to compare self-reports of crime with official rates. In general, it is hypothesized that estimates of program impacts on these primary outcomes for both mothers and children across all three trials will be more pronounced with measures of crime based upon official records than on self-report. Control group women and children are predicted to have under-reported arrests and convictions to a greater extent than their nurse-visited counterparts.ca/ncf