Court-Mandated Interventions for Individuals Convicted of Domestic Violence

Abstract

...The aim of this systematic review is to assess the effects of post-arrest court-mandated interventions (including pre-trial diversion programs) for domestic violence offenders that target, in part or exclusively, batterers with the aim of reducing their future likelihood of re-assaulting above and beyond what would have been expected by routine legal procedures.... We included experimental or rigorous quasi-experimental evaluations of court-mandated batterer intervention programs that measured official or victim reports of future domestic violent behavior...The mean effect for official reports of domestic violence from experimental studies showed modest benefit whereas the mean effect for victim reported outcomes was zero. Quasi-experimental studies using a no-treatment comparison had inconsistent findings indicating an overall small harmful effect. In contrast, quasi-experimental studies using a treatment dropout design showed a large, positive mean effect on domestic violence outcomes. The latter studies suffer, we believe, from selection bias. (Author text)