Research for Practice

Do Batterer Intervention Programs Work? Two Studies

U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

SEPT. 03 
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Deborah J. Daniels

Assistant Attorney General

Sarah V. Hart

Director, National Institute of Justice
Findings and conclusions of the research reported here are those of the

researchers and do not reflect the official position or policies of the U.S.

Department of Justice.

The Brooklyn study discussed in this Research for Practice was conducted

under National Institute of Justice (NIJ) grant number 94–IJ–CX–0047 and the

Broward study was conducted under NIJ grant number 96–WT–NX–0008.

SEPT. 03

Do Batterer Intervention Programs Work?

Two Studies 

NCJ 200331
For more than a decade,

courts have been sending

convicted batterers to intervention programs rather than

to prison. But do these programs work? Two studies in

Florida and New York tested

the most common type of

batterer intervention. Their

findings raise serious questions about the effectiveness

of these programs. However,

problems conducting the

research raise questions

about the studies’ findings.

What did the

researchers find? 

Batterer intervention programs do not change batterers’ attitudes and may have

only minor effects on behavior, according to these studies. The Florida study found

no significant differences

between those who had

treatment and those who did

not as to whether they battered again or their attitudes

toward domestic violence.

The study did find an apparent relationship between

whether an offender was

employed or owned a house

and whether he reoffended:

Those with the most to lose

were the least likely to reoffend. In New York, batterers

ii

RESEARCH FOR PRACTICE / SEPT. 03

ABOUT THIS REPORT 

in a 26-week program were

less likely to reoffend than

those in an 8-week program,

but neither group showed

any change in attitudes

toward women or domestic

violence.

What were the studies’

limitations?

Researchers face serious

problems in studying batterer

intervention programs:

■ Batterers drop out at high

rates.

■ Victims often relocate or

become difficult to find.

■ No measures have been

designed to specifically

assess batterers’ attitudes.

■ To protect victims, judges

often override random

assignment of batterers to

a control group.

These research limitations

can affect the quality of the

collected data, which can, in

turn, affect researchers’ ability to draw verifiable conclusions. Although both studies

tried to address these limitations, they could not avoid

them entirely.
1

DO BATTERER INTERVENTION PROGRAMS WORK?

This report is based on a

longer research report:

Batterer Intervention 

Programs: Where Do 

We Go From Here? by

Shelly Jackson, Lynnette

Feder, David R. Forde,

Robert C. Davis, Christopher D. Maxwell, and

Bruce G. Taylor, Washington, DC: U.S. Department

of Justice, National Institute of Justice, June 2003,

NCJ 195079.

Batterer intervention programs have been proliferating in the United States for

the past two decades. These

programs give batterers an

alternative to jail. They usually involve several months of

attendance at group therapy

sessions that attempt to stop

the violence and change the

batterers’ attitudes toward

women and battering.

Mounting evidence indicates

that the programs might be

ineffective.

Two recent evaluations, one

in Broward County, Florida,

and the other in Brooklyn,

New York,1 evaluated interventions based on the Duluth

model, which is the most

commonly used program in

the Nation—many States

mandate its use (see “Types

of Batterer Interventions”).

The Broward County study

found that the batterer intervention program had little or

no effect, and the Brooklyn

study found only minor

improvement in some subjects. Neither program

changed subjects’ attitudes

toward domestic abuse.

Do Batterer Intervention Programs

Work? Two Studies 

However, limitations in the

studies raise additional

issues. Are the evaluations

correct that these programs

don’t change batterers’

behavior and attitudes, or do

shortcomings in the evaluations cover up program

effects? There is no adequate answer to this question. Both issues may need

to be addressed in future programs and studies.

Broward County: Does

stake-in-conformity

matter most?

The Broward County study

found no significant difference between the treatment

and control groups in attitudes toward the role of

women, whether wife beating should be a crime, or

whether the State has the

right to intervene in cases of

domestic violence. It also

found no significant difference between these groups

in whether victims expected

their partners to beat them

again. Moreover, no significant difference was found in

violations of probation or 
2

RESEARCH FOR PRACTICE / SEPT. 03

TYPES OF BATTERER INTERVENTIONS

The Broward County and Brooklyn batterer intervention

programs were based on the Duluth model. The Duluth

model’s underlying theory is that batterers want to control

their partners and that changing this dynamic is key to

changing their behavior. Its curriculum uses a “power and

control wheel” depicting tactics abusers use to control

their partners. Themes counteracting these tactics are

discussed in classes and group sessions that attempt to

induce batterers to confront their attitudes and behavior.

There are several alternatives to the Duluth model.

Cognitive-behavioral intervention views battering as a

result of errors in thinking and focuses on skills training

and anger management. Another model, group practice,

works from the premise that battering has multiple causes

and is best addressed through a combined approach that

includes an individual needs assessment. Proponents of

these programs believe that a more long-term approach

than the Duluth model is necessary.*

Programs based on batterer typologies or profiles are

gaining popularity. These interventions profile the batterer

through a psychological assessment, then classify him by

level of risk, substance abuse, and other factors that may

influence which intervention is most likely to work for him.

Programs based on this approach are still relatively new

and not fully evaluated.

A controversial intervention is couples therapy, which

views men and women as equally responsible for creating

disturbances in the relationship. It is widely criticized for

assigning the victim a share of the blame for the continuation of violence.

Notes

*Examples of these programs include Emerge and AMEND (Abusive Men

Exploring New Directions). See Healey, K., C. Smith, and C. O’Sullivan, Batterer Intervention: Program Approaches and Criminal Justice Strategies,

Issues and Practices, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National

Institute of Justice, 1998, NCJ 168638.

rearrests, except that men

who were assigned to the

program but did not attend all

sessions were more likely to

be rearrested than members

of the control group.

Evaluators tried to determine

what could account for differences in men’s self-reports

of physical violence. They

considered whether the

offender was assigned to

treatment; the number of

classes he attended; and

such stake-in-conformity 

variables as marital status,

residential stability, and employment. These last factors

proved crucial.

Attending the program had

no effect on the incidence of

physical violence. Rather,

offenders who were employed, married, and/or owned a

home were less likely to batter again. Younger men and

men with no stable residence

(regardless of age) were

more likely to abuse their

partners. Older men who

owned a home were less

likely to do so.

Twenty-four percent of men

in both the experimental and

control groups were rearrested at least once during their

year on probation. Again,

attending the program had

no effect. Rather, whether an
offender was employed (a

stake-in-conformity variable)

seemed to have more influence on whether he was

rearrested.

Brooklyn: Is longer

treatment more 

effective?

The Brooklyn study unintentionally had two experimental

groups of offenders. After

the study was underway,

defense attorneys objected

to the 26-week program’s

duration and cost and advised their clients not to participate. To preserve the

study, offenders were offered an accelerated 8-week

program, which created a

second experimental sample.

Batterers assigned to 26

weeks of treatment were

less likely than the control

group and those assigned to

8-week classes to be arrested again for a crime against

the same victim. Neither

program changed batterers’

attitudes toward domestic

violence. There were significant differences in reoffending, however. Even though

more offenders completed

the shorter program, the 26-

week group had fewer criminal complaints than either the

control group or the 8-week

group.

3

DO BATTERER INTERVENTION PROGRAMS WORK?

Men who attended the

longer treatment committed

fewer new violent acts than

those who attended the

shorter treatment or those

who had no treatment. This

may suggest that providing

treatment for a longer period

of time helped reduce battering during the term of treatment and for some time

thereafter.

Program and research

issues

Concerns about research

methodology cloud most batterer intervention program

evaluations, and these two

studies were no exception.

The major issues are— ■ Maintaining sample integrity. Keeping assignments

to batterer programs truly

random is consistently a

challenge.

2

■ Low attendance, high attrition, difficulty following 

up. High dropout and low

response rates can lead to

overly positive estimates

of program effects.

■ Inadequate data sources.

Official records used to validate batterer and victim

reports may be collected

inconsistently across jurisdictions; also, they capture
4

RESEARCH FOR PRACTICE / SEPT. 03

only those violations that

reach the authorities. Evidence suggests that batterers often avoid rearrest by

switching to psychological

and verbal abuse.3

■ Difficulty measuring outcomes. Evaluators lack

good survey instruments

to measure batterer behavior and attitudes. The

revised Conflict Tactics

Scale (CTS2) used in these

studies was not designed

for before and after measurements.4 The Brooklyn

study raised another issue

common to batterer intervention program studies:

Do evaluations examine the

effects of the intervention

or the effects of assignment

to a treatment group?5

■ Who is defining success? A

final concern is broader in

scope: Is a mere reduction

in violence enough? These

studies considered a reduction in violence to be a success based on the premise

that it is unrealistic to

expect batterers to abandon violent behavior after

one intervention. But a

“statistically significant

reduction in violence” may

mean little to a battered

woman.6

New directions for

protecting victims

The bottom line is: What are

the best ways to protect victims? Batterer intervention

programs are one approach,

although much remains to be

learned about them—specifically, which program works

best for which batterer under

which circumstances.7 But

perhaps what is needed is a

whole new approach.

Rethinking intervention.

The models that underlie batterer intervention programs

may need improvement.

New approaches based on

research into the causes of

battering and batterer profiles8 may be more productive than a one-size-fits-all

approach.9 Researchers may

also draw lessons from other

disciplines, such as substance abuse interventions—

for example, that length of

treatment may influence the

outcome.10

Improvements in how programs are put into practice

may also be necessary, since

variations in how programs

are carried out may reduce

their effectiveness. Researchers have noted greater effects

in demonstration programs

implemented by researchers

than in practical programs

A “statistically

significant

reduction in

violence” may

mean little to 

a battered

woman.
5

DO BATTERER INTERVENTION PROGRAMS WORK?

implemented by juvenile or

criminal justice agencies.

Thus, the degree to which a

program is faithful to the

intervention model may

determine how well it works.

For example, some programs

have few sanctions for dropping out, whereas others

closely monitor attendance.

This suggests the need to

test the effectiveness of

close monitoring and required attendance.

Linking batterer programs

to other programs and

responses. Batterer intervention programs may be effective only in the context of a

broader criminal justice and

community response to

domestic violence that

includes arrest, restraining

orders, intensive monitoring

of batterers,11 and changes to

social norms that inadvertently tolerate partner violence.

If monitoring is partly responsible for lower reoffense

rates, as the Brooklyn

experiment suggests, judicial

monitoring may be a useful

approach. The Judicial Oversight Demonstration initiative—a collaboration among

the National Institute of Justice, the Office on Violence

Against Women, and three

local jurisdictions—is testing

this idea.12 Other innovations

might include mandatory

intervention (indeterminate

probation) until the batterer

no longer endangers his

partner, an approach that

has been used with sex

offenders.13

Improving evaluations.

Although the quality of batterer intervention program

evaluations has improved,14

barriers remain. By collaborating, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers

may be able to develop better strategies and improve

the rigor of experimental

evaluations.

For example, researchers

need to find better ways to

maintain contact with batterers and victims and better

instruments than the revised

CTS2.15 They need to develop

more reliable ways of validating batterer and victim reports than relying strictly on

official records of rearrests

and probation violations. Statistical tools can be applied to

Although these studies focus on male batterers, women

batter as well. The dynamics of battering appear to 

differ for men and women, which suggests a need for

intervention programs designed specifically for female

batterers. Currently, it appears that most women batterers

are being placed in male-dominated batterer intervention

programs.
6

RESEARCH FOR PRACTICE / SEPT. 03

correct for nonrandom assignment and other problems.16

Since batterer intervention

programs are a relatively new

response to a critical social

problem, it is too early to

abandon the concept. More

work needs to be done to

determine the causes of 

battering and test new

responses.

Notes

1. Davis, R.C., B.G. Taylor, and C.D.

Maxwell, Does Batterer Treatment

Reduce Violence? A Randomized

Experiment in Brooklyn, final report

to the National Institute of Justice,

Washington, DC: National Institute

of Justice, 2000, NCJ 180772; Feder,

L., and D.R. Forde, A Test of the Efficacy of Court-Mandated Counseling

for Domestic Violence Offenders:

The Broward Experiment, final report

to the National Institute of Justice,

Washington, DC: National Institute

of Justice, 2000, NCJ 184752.

2. Compromises in random assignment may have diluted the Brooklyn

program’s impact.

3. See Gondolf, E.W., “Patterns of

Reassault in Batterer Programs,”

Violence and Victims 12(4)(1997):

373–87; and Harrell, A.V., Evaluation

of Court-Ordered Treatment for

Domestic Violence Offenders, final

report to the State Justice Institute,

Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 1991.

4. The revised CTS2 assesses

offender reports of abuse. See

Straus, M.A., S.L. Hamby, S. BoneyMcCoy, and D.B. Sugarman, “The

Revised Conflict Tactics Scale

(CTS2): Development and Preliminary Psychometric Data,” Journal of

Family Issues 17(3)(1996): 283–316.

Concerns about the types of batterers studied and the effects of mandating treatment are discussed in

Davis, et al., Does Batterer Treatment Reduce Violence? 15–17.

5. The Broward study statistically

tested for this possibility and found

no treatment effect.

6. See Edleson, J.L., “Controversy

and Change in Batterer’s Programs,”

in Future Interventions with Battered

Women and Their Families, ed. J.L.

Edleson and Z.C. Eisikovitz, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications,

1996.

7. Gondolf, E.W.,“Batterer Programs:

What We Know and Need to Know,”

Journal of Interpersonal Violence

12(1)(1997): 83–98.

8. Holtzworth-Munroe, A., and G.L.

Stuart, “Typologies of Male Batterers: Three Subtypes and the Differences Among Them,” Psychological

Bulletin 116(3)(1994): 476–97. Also

see Wexler, D.B., “The Broken Mirror: A Self Psychological Treatment

Perspective for Relationship Violence,” Journal of Psychotherapy,

Practice, and Research 8(2)(1999):

129–41.

9. Healey, K., C. Smith, and C. O’Sullivan, Batterer Intervention: Program

Approaches and Criminal Justice

Strategies, Issues and Practices,

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of

Justice, National Institute of Justice,

1998, NCJ 168638.
7

DO BATTERER INTERVENTION PROGRAMS WORK?

10. Taxman, F.S., “12 Steps to

Improved Offender Outcomes:

Developing Responsive Systems of

Care for Substance-Abusing Offenders,” Corrections Today 60(6)(1998):

114–117, 166. Also see Howard,

K.I., K. Moras, and W. Lutz, “Evaluation of Psychotherapy: Efficacy,

Effectiveness, and Patient

Progress,” American Psychologist

51(10)(1996): 1059–1064.

11. A. Klein, cited in Healey, et al.,

Batterer Intervention: Program

Approaches and Criminal Justice

Strategies, 10.

12. “Experiment Demonstrates How

to Hold Batterers Accountable,”

National Institute of Justice Journal

244 (July 2000): 29.

13. Hafemeister, T.L., “Legal Aspects

of the Treatment of Offenders

With Mental Disorders,” in R.M.

Wettstein, ed., Treatment of Offenders With Mental Disorders, New

York: Guilford Press, 1998: 44–125.

14. Davis, R.C., and B.G. Taylor,

“Does Batterer Treatment Reduce

Violence? A Synthesis of the Literature,” Women and Criminal Justice

10(2)(1999): 69–93.

15. See Gondolf, E.W., “Batterer

Programs: What We Know and Need

to Know;” and Sullivan, C.M., M.H.

Rumptz, R. Campbell, K.K. Eby, and

W.S. Davidson, “Retaining Participants in Longitudinal Community

Research: A Comprehensive Protocol,” Journal of Applied Behavioral

Science 32(3)(1996): 262–76.

16. See Jackson, S., et al., Batterer

Intervention Programs: Where Do

We Go From Here? NIJ Special

Report, Washington, DC: U.S.

Department of Justice, National

Institute of Justice, June 2003, NCJ

195079: 26.

Additional reading

Babcock, J.C., and J.J. La

Taillade, “Evaluating Interventions for Men Who Batter,”

in Domestic Violence: Guidelines for Research-Informed

Practice, J.P. Vincent and

E.N. Jouriles, eds., Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2000.

Lipsey, M., G. Chapman, and

N. Landenberger, “CognitiveBehavioral Programs for

Offenders: A Synthesis of

the Research on Their Effectiveness for Reducing Recidivism,” paper presented at

the Systematic Reviews of

Criminological Interventions

conference, Washington, DC,

April 2–3, 2001.

Moffitt, T.E., and A. Caspi,

Findings About Partner Violence from the Dunedin 

Multidisciplinary Health

and Development Study,

Research in Brief, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of

Justice, National Institute of

Justice, 1999, NCJ 170018.

Tolman, R.M., and J.L. Edleson, “Intervention for Men

Who Batter: A Review of

Research,” in Understanding
8

RESEARCH FOR PRACTICE / SEPT. 03

Partner Violence: Prevalence,

Causes, Consequences, and

Solutions, ed. S.R. Stith and

M.A. Straus, Minneapolis,

MN: National Council on

Family Relations, 1995:

262–273.
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