Every year in California over 100,000 arrests are made for misdemeanor and felony domestic violence charges.1 Since 1994, California law has required defendants who are convicted and granted probation in these cases to complete a certified batterer intervention program (BIP).2 In addition, recognizing the severity of the problem of intimate-partner violence and the unique challenges these cases present, many superior courts in California have adopted specialized procedures for handling domestic violence cases such as using dedicated calendars and holding periodic review hearings with probationers. Adopting specialized procedures for handling domestic violence cases generally requires that courts coordinate their activities more closely with other justice system partners. Law enforcement, district attorneys, public defenders, the courts, probation departments, BIPs, victim-assistance programs, and other social service providers compose a batterer-intervention system. Working together, they form the system that confronts batterers with a variety of potential sanctions—ranging from incarceration to intensive monitoring by probation and the courts—as well as a requirement for rehabilitation through mandatory counseling and educational programs designed to change the attitudes and behavior of batterers. Despite the clear interdependence of different justice system partners in the monitoring of domestic violence offenders, research on the efficacy of the justice system response to domestic violence has historically focused on individual components of the system. As a result, while arrest policy, domestic violence court monitoring, and BIP treatment modality have all been studied to determine the impact of these interventions, it remains unclear which elements of the system—sanctions, judicial review, frequency of review, intervention program modality, or some combination of these and other factors—ultimately reduce the likelihood of further violence by the batterer. This study takes a systems perspective in evaluating the oversight of domestic violence offenders in five counties in California. The goal is not to study the effectiveness of these different jurisdictions per se, but rather to specify the system components and collaborative relationships among justice system partners that are most likely to improve compliance with court-ordered treatment programs and reduce re-offense in domestic violence cases. This study looks to document the differences that exist across jurisdictions and to understand the combined effect on domestic violence offenders of court, probation, and BIP oversight in different jurisdictions. California’s large population makes the state’s justice system particularly well-suited for this type of evaluation. The large number of participants attending batterer intervention programs in the state made it possible to study a sample that provides greater confidence in the significance of the findings than in previous studies. Recent studies by Davis et al. and Feder and Forde3 used total sample sizes of 376 and 404 respectively. In a four-site, cross-state evaluation conducted by Gondolf, the total sample size is 840.4 This report draws on a sample of over a thousand men enrolled in treatment programs in five jurisdictions in the state.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 23:36:20 +0000
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