Court-mandated interventions for individuals convicted of domestic violence: An updated Campbell systematic review

Background Survey research and analysis of police records, hospital emergency rooms, and women's shelters have clearly established the severity of the intimate partner violence problem and the need to find programs to address this issue. Roughly 1 in 4 women in an intimate relationship is a victim of intimate partner violence. Court‐mandated batterer intervention programs (BIPs) have been implemented throughout the United States as a leading method to address this problem. These programs are also now implemented in Canada and Europe. These programs emerged from the women's shelter movement leading to programs with a strong feminist orientation, such as the Duluth Model. The programs that were developed were group‐based and relied on psychoeducational methods. Their aim was to get men to take responsibility for their sexist beliefs and stop abusing their partners by teaching them alternative responses for handling their anger. More recent programs draw from cognitive‐behavioral therapeutic principles or a mix of the latter with feminist components as well. Objectives This is an update of our prior review. The aim was to assess the effects of postarrest court‐mandated interventions for intimate partner violence offenders that target, in part or exclusively, male batterers. Our focus was on studies aimed at reducing intimate partner violence, above and beyond what would have been expected by routine legal procedures (e.g., probation monitoring, etc.). Search Methods We searched numerous databases and websites, bibliographies of published reviews of related literature, and a scrutiny of annotated bibliographies of related literature. Our goal was to identify all published and unpublished literature that met our selection criteria. The original review identified nine eligible studies. The updated search identified two new studies. The total sample size across these 11 studies was 4824. Selection Criteria We included experimental (random assignment) and quasi‐experimental evaluations of court‐mandated BIPs that measured official or victim reports of future intimate partner violence. Rigorous quasi‐experimental designs were defined as those that either used matching or statistical controls to improve the comparability of the treated (program) and untreated (comparison) groups. The original review also included quasi‐experimental designs that used treatment drop‐outs as the comparison group. Given the serious selection bias of such studies, these have not been included in this update. Data Collection and Analysis We coded characteristics of the treatment, sample, outcomes, and research methods. Findings were extracted in the form of an effect size and effect sizes were analyzed using the inverse‐variance weight method of meta‐analysis. Official report and victim report outcomes were analyzed separately as were the different design types (i.e., random assignment and quasi‐experimental designs with a no treatment comparison). Results The mean effect for official reports of intimate partner violence from experimental studies showed a modest (but statistically nonsignificant) benefit for the program group (odds ratio, 0.79; 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.49–1.28], k = 7) whereas the mean effect for victim reported outcomes showed equal outcomes for both groups (e.g., no benefit or harm; odds ratio, 0.99; 95% CI, [0.74–1.32], k = 7). The quasi‐experimental studies showed a small but not statistically significant benefit for the program group on official reports (odds ratio, 0.54; 95% CI [0.24–1.22], k = 7). One quasi‐experiment reported a nonsignificant effect for a victim report outcome (odds ratio, 1.76; 95% CI [0.50–6.14], k = 1). None of the analyses were statistically significant. Thus, there is insufficient evidence to conclude that these programs are effective. Both the official measure and the victim reported measures have potential sources of bias, increasing the uncertainty regarding any benefits or harms related to these programs. Authors' Conclusions The findings, we believe, raise doubts about the effectiveness of court‐mandated BIPs in reducing re‐assault among men convicted of misdemeanor intimate partner violence. New programs and/or entirely new approaches to this important social problem should be explored.