Assessing amenability to treatment in community corrections: Creating a valid and reliable instrument for male batterers

The last two decades have seen the institutionalization of Batterers' Intervention Programs (BIPs) as a criminal justice system strategy to reduce domestic violence in our society. The evaluation of the efficacy of BIPs has become a key area of research, with mixed findings. However, there is one consistent result among all the studies: BIPs have high rates of client attrition. This is problematic to researchers who cannot determine the effect of treatment, if male offenders do not complete it; it burdens programs who have finite resources and can not service all the clients referred to them; and it taxes judges who are responsible for the decision to jail or treat offenders. A not so small caveat in the knowledge that has been acquired on BIPs is the lack of research and policy addressing cultural diversity. While African Americans make up more than half the men arrested for domestic violence in most urban areas, their rate of program completion falls behind that of white offenders (Gondolf & Williams 2001).; This study will offer a race-specific approach in its analysis to help better inform BIP research while contributing to the discipline of sociology by offering a practical, problem solving research instrument for practitioners in the hopes of ultimately reducing domestic violence. It will achieve these goals first, by testing the application of sociology theory and second, by offering practitioners an effective tool to assist in selecting candidates for treatment in places where community resources are limited thereby increasing successful treatment completion leading to a reduction in recidivism.