Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) - Detailed Report

The DIAP has two distinct aspects: the Coordinated Community Response and the "Duluth Model" offender education program.

The Coordinated Community Response (CCR)

• Focus interventions on stopping an offender's use of violence, not fixing the relationship.
• Use the power of the state through arrest and prosecution to place controls on an offender's behavior.
• Monitor an offender's compliance with conditions of probation, protections orders, and court-mandated counseling.
• Provide victims of abuse emergency housing, protections orders, information, and advocacy to increase safety and autonomy.
• Monitor the community response by tracking cases to ensure intervening agencies conform to agreed-upon policies.
• Resolve problems by examining and documenting the manner in which practitioners are responding to cases that appear to be in conflict with policies and administrative procedures. In Duluth, this is the responsibility of the DAIP.
• Work through problems in interagency meetings coordinated by the DAIP.
• Work to shield children from violence by determining visitation conditions and by linking the safety of children to the safety of their mother.

"The Duluth Model" offender education program

• Assist the participant to understand that his acts of violence are a means of controlling his partner's actions, thoughts, and feelings by examining the intent of his acts of abuse and how it is tied to the belief system from which he operates.
• Educate the participants through the use of group dialogue.
• Increase the participant's understanding of the causes of his violence by examining the cultural and social contexts in which he uses violence against his partner.
• Increase the participant's willingness to change his abusive behavior by examining the negative effects of his behavior on his relationship, his partner, his children, and himself.
• Increase the participant's ability to hold himself responsible for the hurt he has caused by creating a safe and accountable environment
• Assist the participant to understand equality, respect, love, and partnership by examining the actions, intents, and beliefs necessary to realize these positive characteristics of relationships.

Dobash, R.P., Dobash, R.E., Cavanagh, K. & Lewis, R. (1999). A research evaluation of British programmes for violent men, Journal of Social Policy, 28(2), 205-233.

Men ordered by the court to one of two British batterer intervention programs, including CHANGE, which is based on the DAIP, were compared with men given other sanctions such as probation, prison time, or fines in a nonequivalent control group design. Men (n=122) self-reported violence on the Violence Assessment Index. Women partners (n=134) self-reported injuries on the Injury Assessment Index. Assessments were taken at 3 and 12 months after a baseline interview. By the end of a year, 67 percent of men in batterer's programs had not committed another act of reported violence in comparison with 30 percent of men in the comparison group. Although they did not differ at three months, at one year, women in the intervention group were also less likely to report that their partner used violence "frequently." This report did not show results from the CHANGE program separately from the alternative intervention.

Feder, L. & Dugan, L. (2002). A test of the efficacy of court-mandated counseling for domestic violence offenders, Justice Quarterly, 19(2), 343-375.

A randomized control design assigned 404 men into an experimental Duluth-type program (one-year probation and court-mandated counseling) or a control (one-year probation only) condition. The study followed the men for 12 months collecting data on self-reported violence (using the CTS), victims' reports and official records of re-arrests. No significant differences were found in rates of severe and minor abuse, rates of re-arrest, or attitudes, beliefs and behaviors regarding domestic violence. Further analysis indicated that stake-in-conformity (employment and age) predicted both attendance at treatment and re-offending.

Taylor, B.G., Davis, R.C. & Maxwell, C.D. (2001). The effects of a group batterer treatment program: A randomized experiment in Brooklyn, Justice Quarterly, 18(1), 171-201.

Men (n = 376) who agreed to undergo a batterer intervention program were randomly assigned to either a 40-hour DAIP-type program or to 40 hours of community service (custodial) that did not include a treatment component. Those assigned to the intervention showed significantly lower levels of re-assault, based on official arrest and complaint records. However, reports by victims, using the CTS, showed no significant differences in rates of overall abuse or severe abuse during the 12-month follow-up period.

Shepard, M., (1992). Predicting batterer recidivism five years after intervention, Journal of Family Violence, 7(3), 167-178.

At the DAIP in Duluth, researchers (Shepard, 1992) tracked one hundred court-mandated offenders who were ordered to complete a 26-week education program in Duluth over a five-year period. Men who had been any of the following: abusive for a shorter duration prior to the program, ordered to a chemical dependency program, in a chemical dependency program, abused as children, or previously convicted of other crimes were more likely to be recidivists. Variables related to the original intervention, such as the number of sessions attended, completion of the program, and type of court intervention (criminal or civil) did not significantly predict recidivism.

Pence, E. & Taylor, T. (2003). Building safety for battered women and their children into the child protection system, Retrieved February 25, 2007, from Praxis International site: http://data.ipharos.com/praxis/documents/buildingsafety.pdf

Gondolf, E. (2002). Batterer intervention systems: Issues, outcomes, and recommendations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.