̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - domestic violence

Domestic abuse ‘workshops’ reduce repeat offending and harm to public – study

fpjl2 — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 00:15:29 +0000

̽��ֱ��first domestic abuse policing strategy in UK history to be trialled under experimental conditions has shown that an inexpensive two-day course in behaviour management for first offenders resulted in 35% fewer men reoffending against their partner, and reduced further harm to victims by over a quarter.

Researchers at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Institute of Criminology worked with Hampshire Constabulary to conduct the study using the recently developed CARA (Cautions and Relationship Abuse) programme: small-group discussion workshops for men who received conditional cautions for first arrests for low-harm domestic abuse.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that, in just this initial study of hundreds of Southampton-area offenders over a 12-month period, the CARA programme prevented significant harm to victims, hundreds of prison days, and consequently saved thousands of pounds.

̽��ֱ��findings are published in full in this week’s print edition of the Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing.

̽��ֱ��team behind the study say that several police forces want to replicate the use of the CARA course, developed by the Hampton Trust domestic abuse charity. However, they say that current guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service restricts the use of conditional cautions for domestic abuse across the country.

“Dealing with high volumes of low-harm common assault cases against intimate partners is a significant issue for police forces across the UK, particularly in times of continued austerity,” said study lead author Professor Heather Strang, Director of Research at Cambridge’s Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology.

“No other programme to our knowledge now has such strong evidence of yielding a substantial reduction in harm to victims of domestic abuse.

“ ̽��ֱ��CARA programme should be approved for general use with low-harm first offenders, preferably with further randomised trials to ensure it works for different communities across England and Wales.”

̽��ֱ��study only involved adult men who admitted their offence, were not judged ‘high risk’, and had no record of any violence in the preceding two years. All victims agreed to their partners’ participation.

To be eligible for the experiment, the offence had to be classified as either common assault/battery, criminal damage, harassment, threatening behaviour, or domestic theft.

Of the 293 offenders who fit the strict criteria between August 2012 and November 2015, around half were randomly assigned to attend CARA workshops, run by experienced facilitators from the Southampton-based Hampton Trust.

̽��ֱ��CARA programme consists of two five-hour group discussions of between four and seven men, held on weekends one month apart, in which facilitators raise questions that cause attendees to reflect upon their behaviour and how they might change it.

Offenders in the other half, the control group, were given ‘conditional cautions’: meaning any repeat offence within four months would see prosecution in court. This is a commonly deployed police response to first arrests for low-harm domestic abuse.

Professor Strang and colleagues – including several Hampshire police leaders enrolled on the Cambridge Police Executive Programme – followed up with offenders a year after the first arrest. They found that 35% fewer men in the CARA group had committed any further offence against their partner.

However, Cambridge co-author Professor Lawrence Sherman describes such simplistic ‘crime counts’ as unhelpful when determining the real cost of crime: harm caused to victims. “ ̽��ֱ��key result for the team came when we analysed all reoffending in both groups using the Cambridge Crime Harm Index,” he said.

This Harm Index, or CCHI, is a new tool that measures harm by weighting the severity of each crime in sentencing guidelines for different offences, rather than just totting up overall crime figures. ̽��ֱ��Office of National Statistics credits the CCHI as the stimulus for its own (modified) version of a harm index, introduced earlier this year.

Overall, those in the CARA group caused 27% less harm per offender to their partners than the control group.

Using the CCHI, the team calculated that the recommended number of prison days under English sentencing guidelines for reoffenders in the year following the first arrest was an average of 8.4 days for the CARA attendees, compared to an average of 11.6 days for offenders not sent to CARA.

“This would mean that, for every thousand first time offenders sent to CARA workshops, 380 days of recommended imprisonment would be saved, and victims would be spared the inflicted harm equivalent to 380 common assaults, or 19 assaults with actual bodily harm,” said Sherman.

Men who participated in the CARA workshops described having a greater understanding of the impact of their behaviour on partners and children, and when to walk away from a fight. Some talked of going on to attend support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous as a result.

Chantal Hughes, Chief Executive of the Hampton Trust, said: "We know from consultations with victims that they want help for their partners. Those choosing not to remain in an intimate relationship often have children, and this means child contact arrangements. Victims have advised us that workshops such as CARA are a positive and much needed intervention."

Study co-author Scott Chilton, Assistant Chief Constable of Hampshire Police and Chair of the Society of Evidence Based Policing, said: “CARA is an outstanding example of evidence based innovation that can influence national police policy and practices.

“This type of research, where professionals from law enforcement work with academia and charitable organisations, has proved to be extremely promising.”

First UK experiment on policing domestic abuse finds fewer men reoffending against partners – and reoffenders causing less harm to victims – when mandated to attend charity-run discussion course. Researchers call on Government to approve rollout of programme across England and Wales.

No other programme to our knowledge now has such strong evidence of yielding a substantial reduction in harm to victims of domestic abuse

Heather Strang

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Mandatory arrest in domestic violence call-outs causes early death in victims

fpjl2 — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 09:56:56 +0000

New research from a major ‘randomised’ US crime study conducted 23 years ago finds that domestic violence victims whose partners were arrested on common assault charges – mostly without causing injury – were 64% more likely to have died early, compared to victims whose partners were warned but not removed by police.

Among African-American victims, arrest increased early mortality by a staggering 98% – as opposed to white victims, whose mortality was increased from arrest by just 9%.

̽��ֱ��research also found that employed victims suffered the worst effects of their partners’ arrests. Employed black victims with arrested partners suffered a death rate over four times higher than those whose partner received a warning, which is given at the scene and does not create a criminal record. No such link was found in white victims.

̽��ֱ��vast majority of victim deaths following the Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment were not murders, accidents or suicides. ̽��ֱ��victims died from common causes of death such as heart disease, cancer and other internal illnesses.

̽��ֱ��study’s authors say that causes are currently unknown but such health impacts are consistent with chronic stress that could have been amplified by partner arrest. They call for a “robust review” of UK and US mandatory arrest policies in domestic violence cases.

“It remains to be seen whether democracies can accept these facts as they are, rather than as we might wish them to be,” said Professor Lawrence Sherman from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Institute of Criminology, who authored the study with his colleague Heather M. Harris from ̽��ֱ�� of Maryland.

“ ̽��ֱ��fact that there has never been a fair test of the benefits and harms of so-called ‘positive action’ policy in the UK means that British police can only be guided by US evidence. That evidence clearly indicates more death than life results in at least one large sample.”

“If the current policy is to be continued in the UK, the moral burden of proof now lies with those who wish to continue this mass arrest policy.”

̽��ֱ��findings will be announced in the US today and presented in the UK this Wednesday at the winter meeting of the Society of Evidence-Based Policing. They will be published in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Experimental Criminology.

Previous studies have shown post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) to be prevalent in victims of domestic violence, and that low but chronic PTSS has been linked to premature death from coronary heart disease and other health problems. ̽��ֱ��authors observed that the impact of seeing a partner arrested could create a traumatic event for the victim, one that raises their risk of death. An arrest may cause more trauma in concentrated black poverty areas than in white working-class neighbourhoods, for reasons not yet understood.

̽��ֱ��exact cause of these surprising results still remains a ‘medical mystery,’ say the study’s authors . But, whatever the explanation, the harmful effects of mandatory arrest poses a challenge to policies that have “been on the books” in most US states and across the UK for decades, they say.

“ ̽��ֱ��evidence shows that black women are dying at a much higher rate than white women from a policy that was intended to protect all victims of domestic violence, regardless of race,” said Sherman. “It is now clear that a pro-arrest policy has failed to protect all victims, and that a robust review of these policies is urgently needed.”

“Because all the victims had an equal chance of having their partners arrested by random assignment, there is no other likely explanation for this difference except that it was caused by seeing their partners arrested.”

̽��ֱ��Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment took place between 1987 and 1988, with support from the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the US Department of Justice. Sherman, who led the study, described it as “arguably the most rigorous test ever conducted of the effects of arrest”.

̽��ֱ��experiment enrolled 1,125 victims of domestic violence whose average age was 30 years. Each case was the subject of an equal probability ‘lottery’ of random assignment. Two-thirds of the suspects were arrested with immediate jailing. One-third received a warning at the scene with no arrest. In 2012-13, Sherman and Harris searched state and national records for the names of every one of the victims.

̽��ֱ��record search showed that a total of 91 victims had died. Of these, 70 had been in the group whose partners were arrested, compared to 21 whose partners had been warned. This translated into 93 deaths per 1,000 victims in the arrest group, versus 57 deaths per 1000 in the warned group. For the 791 black victims (who were 70% of the sample), the rates were 98 per 1,000 for arrest, versus 50 per 1,000 for the warned group.

“These differences are too large to be due to chance,” Sherman said. “They are also too large to be ignored.”

Over 100,000 arrests are made each year in England and Wales for domestic abuse, with most cases not proceeding to prosecution. ̽��ֱ��cost is substantial, at fifteen to twenty per cent of all arrests police make. Sherman, who has long-campaigned for ‘evidence-based’ policing, said that the “only way proof can be attained is for one or more UK police agencies, or perhaps the College of Policing, to conduct the same experiment that the Milwaukee Police undertook in 1987-88”.

Cambridge criminologist follows up on landmark US domestic violence arrest experiment and finds that black victims who had partners arrested rather than warned were twice as likely to die young. Researchers call for UK police to conduct similar experiments so that arrest policy can be based on evidence.

It remains to be seen whether democracies can accept these facts as they are, rather than as we might wish them to be

Lawrence Sherman

Screenshots from TV report on the original Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment that took place in 1987-88

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