AMEND, Inc. (Abusive Men Exploring New Directions) - Detailed Report

• Educate the offender about what domestic violence is and its dynamics, in order for him to learn to identify his own abusive behaviors.
• Teach the offender self-management techniques to avoid abusive behaviors.
• Educate the offender on non-abusive, adaptive, and pro-social relationship and interpersonal skills and on healthy sexual relationships.
• Educate and increase the offender's skills in problem solving and conflict resolution.
• Educate the offender on the impact of substance abuse and its correlation with violence.
• Educate the offender on the socio-cultural basis for violence.
• Educate the offender on the legal ramifications of their violence.
• Identify and address issues of gender-role socialization and its relationship to violence.
• Increase the offender's understanding of the impact of violence on child victims and children exposed to family violence.
• Increase offender's understanding of basic parental responsibilities and refer to parenting classes when appropriate.
• Increase the offender's understanding of the impact of violence on adult intimate victims.
• Educate the offender regarding change process he will be expected to go through.
• Help the offender acknowledge responsibility for abusive actions and consequences of actions.
• Identify and offer alternatives to the offender's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that facilitate abusive behaviors.
• Identify and decrease the offender's deficits in social and relationship skills, where applicable.
• Identify and confront the offender's issues of power and control, including sexual abuse.
• Identify and confront the offender's pro-criminal and violent attitudes and orientations (e.g., animal abuse, abuse of children, violence toward non-intimates, sexual offenses, etc.).
• Increase the offender's ability to empathize with the victim.
• Identify the effects of any trauma and past victimization sustained by the offender as factors in his potential for re-offending. The offender's history of victimization should never take precedence over his responsibility to be accountable for violent behavior and potential offense, or be used as an excuse, rationalization, or distraction from being held accountable.
• Educate the offender on the potential of re-offending, signs of abuse escalation, and normative regressing.
• Aid the offender in developing a written re-offense prevention plan that will include antecedent thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with abusive behaviors, and alternative options to intervene in a re-offense.
• Provide advocacy services to our clients' partners (female or gay male victims) and children (includes safety planning, 24-hour crisis response, referrals to community resources, and educational support groups).
• Provide counseling to clients' children who have witnessed domestic violence through collaboration with a center that provides it, such as SafeHouse Denver.

Jones, A. S., D'Agostino, Jr., R. B., & Gondolf, E.dward W. (2004). Assessing the effect of batterer program completion on reassault using propensity scores. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 19(9), 1002-1020.

Further analyses of quasiexperimental study (see Gondolf, 1997 below) involving a 15-month follow-up (N=633). Outcomes measures included the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) and measures of substance use, arrests, and service use. Propensity scores, based on personality scores, Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST) scores, and demographics were used to balance program completers and program dropouts. Results show that program completion reduced the probability of reassault during the 15-month follow-up by 33% for the full sample, and by nearly 50% for the court-ordered men.

Gondolf, E.W. &Jones, A. S. (2001). The program effect of batterer programs in three cities. Violence and Victims, 16(6), 693-704.

Used same study sample as Gondolf, 1997 below. The sites were 3 well-established batterer programs (one of which was the AMEND site) (N=640). Completing a batterer program reduced the likelihood of reassault by 44-64%, depending on the specification used. Completing a 3-month program appeared to be as effective as completing a 5.5-9-month program (Note - AMEND is the 9 month program). The findings remain tentative because of weak instrumental variables for reassault, but do confirm the need for more complex analyses of program effect.

Gondolf, E. W. (2000). A 30-month follow-up of court-referred batterers in four cities. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 44(1), 111-128.

Assessed the long-term outcomes of 4 batterer programs (one of which was the AMEND program in Denver) in a follow-up of court-referred male batterers previously arrested for domestic violence (same sample as Gondolf, 1997 below). 402 batterers' initial and new female partners were interviewed by phone every 3 months for the first 15 months and every 7-8 months for the next 15 months. According to the women's reports, 41% of the men committed a reassault, as measured by the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS), during the 30-month follow-up period (an increase of only 7% over the 15-month re-assault rate). Nearly two-thirds of the first-time reassaults occurred in the first 6 months. About a fifth of the men repeatedly reassaulted their partners and account for most of the reported injuries. The reassault rate for men attending a program for 3 months or more was significantly less than for dropouts. The reassault rates were not significantly different across the 4 programs, despite differences in program length and services.

Gondolf, E.W. (1999). A comparison of four batterer intervention systems: Do court referral, program length, and services matter? Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 14(1), 41-61.

A comparative multi-site evaluation was conducted in four geographically distributed cities to examine the relative effectiveness of different approaches to batterer intervention. The intervention systems represent a range of court-referral procedures (pretrial or post-conviction), program duration (3 months to 9 months), and additional services (occasional referral or in-house alcohol treatment). At each site, 210 men (mean age 32 years) were recruited and assessed using the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory and Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test. The batterers' partners were interviewed by phone every 3 months over a 15-months follow-up after intake, with a response rate of 77% overall. There was no significant difference in the reassault rate, portion of men making threats, and victim quality of life across the four sites. The longest, most comprehensive program (the AMEND site in Denver) did, however have a significantly lower rate of severe reassault substantiated in a logistic regression controlling background variables (e.g., partner's report of "frequently drunk", narcissism score and severe pathology). The findings suggest that differing intervention systems that conform to fundamental standards can achieve similar outcomes.

Gondolf, E.W. (1997). Patterns of reassault in batterer programs.Violence and Victims, 12(4), 373-387.

A comparative multi-site evaluation was conducted of 4 well-established batterer programs in geographically distributed cities (one site was the AMEND program in Denver) to assess the pattern of reassault. 840 batterers were recruited and tested at program intake from each site (210 per site). The batterers and their partners were interviewed by phone every 3 months for 15 months after intake with a response rate for the female partners of nearly 70% for the full follow-up. Results show that 31% of the men reassaulted during the follow-up. Rates of verbal abuse (70%) and threats (43%) were much higher, but 73% of the women reported feeling "very safe." Nearly half of the men who reassaulted did so within 3 months after program intake. "Voluntary" participants were significantly more likely to reassault (44% vs. 29%), as were program dropouts (40% vs. 28%).