Court Responses to Batterer Program Noncompliance, Essay Example

The idea that batterer treatment programs exist to rehabilitate offenders sounds grand in theory, but unfortunately, it falls woefully short in practice. The basic idea with the Duluth model is that batterers adhere to patriarchal ideology, and through therapeutic interventions this ideology can be contested and the offender reformed. Another model is the cognitive-behavioral model, which holds that batterers are operating on faulty thinking, and on faulty reasoning. Here, the idea is that by teaching them better ways to think and behave, they will be able to resolve their problems in a much mature and rational way. As the readings have made abundantly clear, however, the evidence indicates that many batterers simply do not change their attitudes towards violence, their relationships, and their victims: they continue to offend and reoffend in many cases. Although the programs do decrease the incidence of battering in some cases, the evidence indicates that even in those cases, batterers’ attitudes remain obdurate and unyielding. In truth, this isn’t surprising: through the lens of defiance theory, batterers’ unwillingness to change their attitudes can be explained as a defiant, oppositional response to the sanctions of the criminal justice system. In other cases, batterers simply know the system very well, and give the answers that they know are desirable.

In chapter 5 of the report, Labriola et al. (2007) explained the rationales for batterer treatment programs. By far the most common response from the courts was that these batterer intervention programs existed for the purposes of treatment and rehabilitation: this response had a 90% rate (p. 35). This is exactly what we read: the main reason that these interventions are used is due to the belief that they can quite often result in positive changes in the batterers’ attitudes and behaviors. The second most common response, given by 73% of the courts, was accountability: the programs exist for the sake of offender accountability. However, with the batterer programs and the victim assistance agencies, the responses were reversed: accountability was given most often, 85% and 74% respectively, and then treatment/rehabilitation, at 85% and 70% (p. 35).

Accountability and confronting batterer attitudes were highly ranked amongst batterer programs and victim assistance agencies, indicating a substantial focus on these aims (pp. 36-37). However, the emphasis on treatment mostly leads to a practice of simply providing offenders with “purely information material (educating, confronting) directed at participants’ attitudes and beliefs” (p. 38). Again, though, there are real problems with putting too much emphasis on this approach: many offenders are incorrigible, and not a few of them have simply learned to give the responses that are desired, effectively ‘going through the motions’ without any real change of heart at all.

Within reason, restorative justice approaches can be very powerful and positive approaches for redressing situations of intimate partner abuse. I believe very firmly that, within reason, victims should have a right to these approaches if they desire them—so long as there is not sufficient reason to believe that the victim’s life is at stake, or their well-being is severely imperiled. To be sure, in some situations they should perhaps be avoided: if the victim is believed to be in very real and severe danger. Simply put, I recognize that there are different intensities of violence, with different dynamics, and I think that in situations where the abuse has not been as severe, and the victim wants a restorative justice approach to be taken, and—in particular—if there is some reason to believe that the offender might be receptive to it, then the restorative justice approaches could quite profitably be used. With regards to what approaches should be used, the approach of mediation seems to me to be especially promising, so long as it is conducted with a well-trained specialist mediator. Again, restorative justice approaches should be used with all due caution, but they can be very productive.

References

Labriola, M., et al. (2007). Court responses to batterer program noncompliance: A national perspective. New York: Center for Court Innovation.