NCJ Number
209570
Journal
Journal of Interpersonal Violence Volume: 17 Issue: 5 Dated: May 2002 Pages: 551-569
Date Published
May 2002
Length
19 pages
Annotation
Using recidivism rates, this study examined the effectiveness of a project designed to enhance coordinated community responses to domestic violence.
Abstract
Duluth, MN, was one of the first communities to develop a coordinated community response to domestic violence through the work of the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP), which was begun in 1980. The core of the DAIP has been a focus on institutional change that will result in the effective coordination of community responses to domestic violence. The current study focused on the male domestic violence offenders who entered the DAIP's Men's Nonviolence Program. The study sample consisted of all men who volunteered or were ordered by the court to attend the program during 1994 (n=261), 1996 (n=217), 1997 (n=220), and the first 6 months of 1998 (n=100). Offenders from 1994 provided pre-intervention data and served as a baseline for later comparisons. As part of the project, the Enhanced DAIP (EDAIP) developed methods for criminal justice practitioners and advocates to collect and share risk-assessment data, which were used to determine the level of sanctions to be recommended for domestic violence offenders. The study hypothesized that the EDAIP, when compared to the DAIP, would have lower rates of recidivism for offenders. There were steady declines in the number of recidivists over the 3 years of the project. Logistic regression analysis found the following variables to be significantly related to recidivism reduction over all years of the study: the offender having been mandated by the court to attend the Men's Nonviolence Program and the offender having completed the program. There was evidence of the effectiveness of probation officers' use of a danger-assessment tool to predict recidivism. 12 tables and 23 references