DCSIMG
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs; National Institute of Justice The Research, Development, and Evaluation Agency of the U.S. Department of Justice U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice ProgramsNational Institute of JusticeThe Research, Development, and Evaluation Agency of the U.S. Department of Justice

Policy and Practice Recommendations from the Expert Roundtable "Batterer Intervention: Doing the Work and Measuring the Progress"

Contradictory research results have created confusion among professionals who work in fields related to domestic violence and criminal justice. To explore how the systems that work with perpetrators of domestic violence could be improved and how research could be more helpful to the field, the Family Violence Prevention Fund and NIJ co-sponsored a meeting on batterer intervention programs (BIPs)and domestic violence research and practice in December 2009.

Following are that groups' recommendations related to policy and practice. [1]

Policy and Practice Recommendations [2]
Topic Short-term Long-term
Stopping the abuse
  • Engage men beyond BIPs.
  • Develop risk assessment and risk management strategies.
  • Get verbally abusive men into BIPs.
  • Increase parenting education within BIPs.
  • Develop post-"treatment" alternatives for men.
  • Increase social change work in communities.
  • Engage men at community level in stopping violence against women.
Testing BIP effectiveness
  • Publish a comprehensive policy document from the roundtable that articulates perspectives and makes recommendations for BIPs.
  • Transfer innovative training and fidelity testing.
  • Increase funds for BIPs with closer enforcement of standards.
  • Reconceptualize goals of BIPs.
  • Create practice-based evidence.
  • Develop minimal standards for training BIP staff.
  • Create national organization to guide BIPs.
  • Set accreditation standards that include participation in coordinated community response, focus on woman and child safety, and collaboration with battered women's groups.
  • Fund research-practitioner collaboration to address evidence-based practice.
  • Develop BIP best practices. Replicate successful models.
  • Learn from specific sites what works and build on that.
Assessing safety and well being of women and children
  • Integrate children and youths' experiences with intimate partner violence.
  • Strengthen women's support systems.
  • Bring battered women's perspective into BIPs and BIP meetings.
Integrating BIPs with other programs
  • Promote better community collaboration.
  • Partner with mental health services.
  • Provide joint, cross-agency funding for multilevel efforts.
  • Develop community engagement models for specific communities.
  • Increase community collaboration.
Understanding court responses
  • Increase judicial training on domestic violence and BIPs.
  
Implementing prevention and early intervention programs
  • Increase community supports.
  • Focus on prevention with an eye on big picture issues like sexism, racism, and economic oppressions.
  • Teach positive relationship-building in schools.
  • Develop early intervention approaches for men in partnering and parenting roles.

Notes

[1] This table is taken from Batterer Intervention: Doing the Work and Measuring the Progress (pdf, 22 pages) Exit Notice, a report on the December 2009 Experts Roundtable prepared by Lucy Salcido Carter.

[2] These are participants' comments and do not constitute a cohesive body of information. Due to space limitations, participants' comments from these discussions have been shortened and paraphrased.

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Date Created: January 04, 2011