Public Awareness

OPDV Bulletin:
Programs for Men Who Batter: What Have We Learned?


"Men who are abusive use emotional, psychological, economic, sexual, and physical abuse in order to control their intimate partners. Domestic violence does not result from individual personal or moral deficits, diseases, diminished intellect, addiction, mental illness, poverty, other person's behaviors, or external events. Abusers act from a set of attitudes and beliefs about how men and women should relate in intimate relationships. In general, abusers believe that they have a right to enforce their will on their female partners.1 This belief, rooted in sexism and misogyny, is supported and tolerated by the society in which we live, a society that has historically condoned the use of violence against women."

NYS Model Domestic Violence Policy for Counties, January 1998


The national proliferation of batterers intervention programs (BIPs) and the diverse ways in which they develop and operate have created an atmosphere of confusion and concern within the battered women's advocacy community a concern shared by the Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. While every newly developing arena involves some level of experimentation, much of the "trial and error" of the BIP system has had the potential to err at the expense of battered women's safety.


OPDV has struggled to find a coherent position on BIPs that makes the safety of battered women paramount, enforces accountability of batterers in the strongest way possible, and identifies a role for BIPs that can support these goals. The central tenets of OPDV's position have changed little in the past decade. What has changed is the amount of available information that supports our caution about the development of and reliance on BIPs to end domestic violence. Our position was initiated as a proactive measure but has become, almost by necessity, reactive to the many harms the use of these programs has often inadvertently created for battered women.


This article is an effort to briefly outline OPDV's position on batterers programs and the rationale for that position. Our position has evolved out of our experience in the development of the Model Domestic Violence Policy for Counties, the findings of the Governor's Commission on Domestic Violence Fatalities, our joint efforts with the Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives and the New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence on the Office of Justice Programs-funded Probation Project, and in administering the NYS Batterers Intervention Project for the past decade.


In sum, our experience indicates that offender accountability can be best achieved through more effective and consistent use of probation supervision and other criminal justice sanctions rather than batterers programs. If batterers programs are to be used by a community, referrals should be in conjunction with a criminal justice or other system response that imposes consequences if the abuser fails to attend the program or re-offends. A batterers program is not necessary to achieve an effective, coordinated response to domestic violence. Rather, given the understanding that the roots of domestic violence rest in the larger social structure, a more productive use of limited resources would be to create a climate of intolerance for abuse, in part through primary prevention programs with youth and comprehensive community education efforts.


The profound concerns voiced by many survivors and domestic violence service providers about local practices reflect the well-intentioned but troublesome tendency to view batterers programs as a necessary mechanism for effecting change in an abuser. Such a view presupposes that a batterer has some individual deficit over which he has no control, and suggests that the abuse is something other than a choice for which there should be clear consequences. In institutionalizing this view, the criminal justice system has traditionally treated domestic violence as less serious than other violent offenses and has used BIPs as a mechanism to divert these offenses from the system, with the hope of changing the individual's behavior and "fixing" the problem of domestic violence in our culture. Such practice is in direct conflict with the understanding of domestic violence as a manifestation of historically condoned male behavior; behavior that entitles men to control and exert power over their partners. It also ignores the fact that the vast majority of men who batter are not violent in their interactions with others - not with the judge, boss, co-worker, or neighbor - only with those with whom they can get away with it, usually wives, girlfriends or children.


Victim Safety and Lack of Accountability


There are many harmful implications when the justice system and community operate from false assumptions about batterers programs:


  • Some victims who wish the relationship to continue but want the abuse to stop, may return to an abusive partner with the hope that his attendance at a BIP will result in his stopping all forms of abuse against her. In fact, the abuser may use his voluntary participation to manipulate his partner into returning, only to drop out of the program and resume or continue his abusive behavior after her return. Alternatively, he may use his participation to prove that he is "working on the relationship" and that she is the real problem.
  • Diversion into BIPs, rather than use of probation or another criminal sanction, is common in low-level offenses (e.g. harassment) and in crimes that come to the attention of the system for the first time, a practice that makes false assumptions about the safety risks for victims in these cases, wrongly equating "low-level" with low risk. There is invariably no supervision by the court or probation in such cases, allowing the batterer to simply not comply with the program with little or no consequence.
  • Even BIPs that require or encourage only mandated referrals have a difficult time ensuring accountability or batterers who fail to comply, and/or find it impossible to establish effective communication with the court in order to determine what, if anything, happened with a particular case once it is returned to the court calendar.

Inconsistency in Evaluations of BIPs


Although many in the criminal justice system, as well as many battered women, hope that participation in a BIP will stop men from committing further violence against their partners, the only thing that we can be certain of regarding the effectiveness of BIPs is that we don't know their efficacy. Research and evaluation findings are inconclusive at best, and many studies have used data collection methods which raise serious ethical concerns or relied on inadequate sources of data.


  • A particularly critical ethical concern results from interviewing battered partners of BIP participants, using aggressive methods of tracking and pursuing them to report on their abusers' behavior and "progress" in the program. This creates obvious safety risks for the victim, as well as concern for the validity of the study's results.
  • Most communities either do not have batterers programs or have BIPs that cannot reach all of the batterers in that community. Those in a program represent only a small sample of the overall abuser population. Nonetheless, results based on these small and non-representative samples of batterers and their partners are being used to shape broad-based research and policy decisions about the efficacy of these programs.
  • What exactly is being measured to determine "effectiveness" is often unclear. Is it a decrease in all forms of abuse or only physical acts of violence? Is it using self-reports, which are notoriously inaccurate, or official re-arrest reports, which represent only a minority of cases? We strongly discourage any BIP from claiming any measure of "success" since there is not only a lack of consensus of what success means, but increased concern for victim safety in making that claim.
  • Cooperation by a batterer in the program or class does not necessarily reflect changes in his behavior at home. There have been frightening accounts of men who say all the right things and are the "star" of the class who are then arrested for horrific acts of violence.

Resource Drain


No BIP, regardless of size, can provide information or education to every batterer in the community, and most batterers remain unidentified by the system. Some local domestic violence task forces report that they wrongly presumed that having a BIP would help them solve the problem of battering in their community and that they put all of their "resource eggs" in the BIP basket. Focusing on a program that reaches only limited numbers with no proven record of effectiveness left them with no time, energy or money to develop meaningful coordination of activities or prevention programs locally. Unfortunately, other available methods of holding offenders accountable are often ignored when a case can be disposed of by referring the offender to a BIP.


Further, while BIPs should operate in coordination with a local program for victims, including opening their classes, policies and curriculum to review and input for the purpose of prioritizing victim safety, this can be astonishingly time consuming. Domestic violence programs frequently either do not have the time to commit to this arduous task or, from their perspective, do not have enough information to do it well. Further, when they do have a differing opinion from that proffered by the BIP, they may encounter resistance or disrespect.


How Did We Get to This Place?


Historically, society has been inconsistent and unclear about how to deal with the complex problem of domestic violence. For centuries, violence against women in intimate relationships was viewed as appropriate or at least tacitly tolerated. When domestic violence was first addressed as an issue, it was viewed as a "family" problem or an individual mental health problem. This was the context in which batterers programs began to develop. Now, acts of domestic violence are more accurately understood as criminal behavior, and abuse is generally seen as inappropriate and unacceptable. Although there is some societal consensus that domestic violence, at least the more serious cases, should result in arrest, the remainder of our criminal justice responses have not followed suit with consistent responses and on-going accountability. Batterers programs are continuing to proliferate, presumably to help fill that accountability gap and provide a resource for the court to "do something" with an abuser. Our concern is that this "something" is inconsistent at best and dangerous at worst. There is no quality control regarding what happens inside the doors of BIPs, victim safety is not always a priority, and mixed messages are sent regarding the goals of BIPs (Accountability? Education? Therapy?). Most importantly, the use of these programs as the primary referral of many courts reduces the likelihood that meaningful sanctions will be imposed. The unfortunate and dangerous result is a lack of accountability, monitoring and supervision for the abuser and a lack of safety planning for the victim.


What Can Be Done to Hold Offenders Accountable?


Our recommendation around the issue of accountability is clear. When men who batter come to the attention of the court, probation should be used to supervise and monitor offenders whenever incarceration is inappropriate. This is the job that probation was designed to do, and this is what will clearly send the message that battering will no longer be tolerated. We must ensure that our justice system is equipped to enforce the message of accountability and put in place clear consequences for batterers - well beyond the arrest response or issuance of orders of protection. By mandating BIP attendance as an element of probation supervision, the court holds offenders accountable and at the same time provides them with the opportunity to identify their behavior as domestic violence, take responsibility for their actions, and understand the state's policy of zero tolerance.


BIPs should not be used as a diversion from the criminal justice system or any other official system's response, e.g., child protection, Family Court, mental health. The OPDV web site at www.opdv.state.ny.us provides information for these systems in the Governor's Model Domestic Violence Policy for Counties.


Time and resources should be shifted into more broad-based community education aimed at truly creating an atmosphere that will not allow abusive behavior to be excused or minimized. We must provide real consequences, both within the criminal justice system and in the broader world in which the batterer lives. Perhaps then we will make a measurable difference in responding to domestic violence, with or without batterers programs.