A research evaluation of British programmes for violent men

In the last two decades there have been a number of social, medical and leg al initiatives in the UK and elsewhere to provide assistance to women who s uffer violence from their partner. The most recent innovations focus on res ponding to the men who perpetrate this violence, In this article we present the initial results of the first British study of programmes for violent m en. The three-year study used a longitudinal method to compare the effects of two court mandated programmes with other, more orthodox, forms of crimin al justice intervention (fines. admonishment, traditional probation, prison ). Here we describe the men's programmes, locate the current study in the c ontext of existing evaluations of similar programmes operating in North Ame rica, outline the methods employed, present the results of the post-hoc mat ching used to assess the probable effects of selection bias and using subse quent prosecutions and the accounts of women, compare the impact of differe nt criminal justice interventions, The results indicate that twelve months after the criminal justice intervention a significant proportion of the Pro gramme men had not subsequently been violent to their partner. This was in contrast to men sanctioned in other ways (the Other CJ group) who were much less likely to have changed their violent behaviour.