Enhancing Safety and Rehabilitation in Intimate Violence Treatments: New Perspectives

Abstract

Linda G. Mills, PhD, JD, LCSWa Peggy Grauwiler, LCSWa Nicole Pezold, MAa Over the last 30 years, safety has been the driving concern in developing treatments for intimate violence and has significantly shaped systematic responses to this problem. One approach has been to develop coordinated community response models that encourage close collaboration among system and service providers to offer more comprehensive, wrap-around services to better guarantee safety.1 Yet another approach has been to legally or physically separate batterers from victims. Pro-arrest policies, which were first introduced in the 1980s, address the safety of female victims by ensuring male batterers are held legally accountable for their offenses and are separated, at least briefly, from their victims.2 Restraining or no-contact orders are also designed to legally separate batterers from victims, while the shelter system seeks to provide women victims a safe place away from home, should they need it. In time, women victims expressed their desire for treatment programs for their partners rather than arrest and incarceration.3 Courts began referring offenders to Batterer Intervention Programs (BIPs) such as the Duluth Model, where male batterers were treated in groups in isolation from their victims.3 This rehabilitation strategy has reinforced the trend to separate female victims from abusive male partners to address each party’s legal and treatment needs individually. Such strategies have been designed almost exclusively to address male violence perpetrated against females and ensure female victims’ safety, while ignoring the fact that intimate violence afflicts both women and men.4,5 As a result, much of the relevant theory and research has been similarly focused on a gendered conception of intimate violence. While this article reviews and answers the concerns of this literature, it underscores as well that new, more inclusive treatments may be applied to the complex range of intimate violence cases. It is also important to acknowledge that criminal justice strategies often overlook the fact that many couples remain inextricably bound for a variety of reasons, regardless of intervention or divorce.4,5 Despite no-contact orders or the threat of future violence, offenders and victims often have continued contact during or after state interventions.4,6 Although no consistent evidence exists on how many women stay or leave, perhaps as many as half of victims persist in their relationships—and if they do leave, research shows that this process