Domestic Violence
It has long been recognized that clients must have the mindset and goals set forth for themselves if they are to succeed in a therapeutic changing process. Whether the goal is to change behavioral or emotional problems, the client must be motivated by their own desires to change. Lee, Uken & Sebold (2007) state that oftentimes in the therapy process, a client will know that he or she needs to change, however, they do not have any indication of when the problem has been successfully dealt with -- or when they are successfully changing their behavior. Because there are no indicators for them (without goals), long-term therapy is often what occurs -- sometimes with successful results and sometimes not. Goal setting becomes a vital part of successful treatment "because it gauges clients' progress toward beneficial solutions to their problems" (Maple, 1998; Lee et al., 2007).
There may be reason to believe that because court-ordered batterers may feel resentment, anger, and blame for their sentence, they may not have the ability to recognize that they must change their behavior; therefore, they will not set up goals for themselves as they will not want to actively engage in the therapeutic process. This could result in recidivism for these batterers. The ability to recognize faults and flaws and set out a goal plan for correcting them is vital for recovery.
The opinion on whether court-ordered batterers' intervention is effective or not has been discussed quite abundantly in the last decade. Rosenberg (2003) found that some of the elements that are helpful when intervening in domestic violence cases are more relational types of assistance. Group support and therapist alliances were the first and foremost elements considered to be the most helpful, according to Rosenberg's (2003) study of male and female domestic violence perpetrators one year after they had completed a 52-week court-mandated intervention program. However, there is still debate about whether court-mandated programs can force people to change.
Babcock, Green and Robie (2004) found through their meta-analytic review of 22 studies evaluating treatment efficacy for domestically violent males that treatment, overall, tended to have a very small effect on the individuals. "Effects due to treatment were in the small range, meaning that the current interventions have a minimal impact on reducing recidivism beyond the effect of being arrested" (2004).
Hypothesis.
The court-ordered batterer's intervention courses are not effective in preventing further domestic violence behavior by offenders as compared to voluntary enrollment in batterer's intervention courses.
Methods.
Participants.
The participants of the study will consist one-half of male inmates who have been convicted of domestic violence assault including assaults that cause homicide or serious injury and have been court-ordered to attend a batterer intervention program, and one-half of male participants of batterer's intervention courses who have not been court-mandated to attend a batterer intervention program. The demographic they will represent is male participants of batterer's intervention courses in the state of Maine -- both voluntary and involuntary course participants. The males will be of legal age (18 and older) that are presently incarcerated and taking court-mandated batterer's intervention courses and males taking batterers intervention courses that are not court-mandated.
A minimum of 100 male participants who are presently enrolled and participating in batterer's intervention courses will be employed -- that is, 50 of the males should be court-mandated to take the course and 50 of the males should be voluntarily taking the course.
Recruitment will be done through the WorkReady program at each facility in the state of Maine as well as through batterer's intervention course institutions. The sample will consist of voluntary and involuntary participants in batterer's intervention courses that are both court-mandated and non-court-mandated.
The study is utilizing a large group of participants (100) in the hopes of achieving an effective random sample. The participants will be a mix of races, ages and cultural backgrounds.
Design and procedure.
The participants will complete a questionnaire about what crime -- or crimes - they have committed in order for them to have been sentenced to incarceration. Specifically, they will be asked questions about all crimes, however, there will be special focus placed on crimes where violence was used. The questionnaire will ask about violence pertaining to family members (children, spouse, etc.) as well as non-family members and strangers. The questionnaire will be approximately 30 to 40 questions that will require rather in-depth answers. The questionnaire will have some multiple choice questions when...
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