A Randomized Controlled Trial of Restorative Justice Intervention for Domestic Violence Crimes in Cases of Intimate Partner Violence

Background and Purpose: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious human rights violation that deleteriously affects every aspect of human life. In the United States, nearly two out of five women and one out of four men reported IPV experience during their lifetime. Research suggests that the effectiveness of the traditional criminal legal system’s responses to IPV, such as mandatory arrests, incarceration, and intervention programs, is still mixed and often limited in preventing future violence; as such, efforts to develop interventions that effectively respond to IPV continue to progress. Restorative justice is an innovative way to address and repair harm through engaging all parties including offenders, victims (when the victim chooses to participate), and communities. This study compared a standard batterer intervention program (BIP) to a hybrid treatment approach that combines BIP with a restorative justice component, called Circles of Peace (CP), in Utah, with a focus on recidivism and harm reduction, and is one of only a few randomized controlled trials on a restorative justice intervention and the first to focus on IPV-only cases.

Methods: 274 offenders (males and females) were court-mandated to treatment for misdemeanor domestic violence crimes in cases of IPV. A pretest-posttest randomized controlled trial was conducted to assess the effect of a standard 16-week BIP (BIP-only) (n=138) compared to BIP (12 weeks) plus CP (4 weeks) (n=138). An intention-to-treat analysis was employed using a 24-month follow-up period focusing on crime counts and severity. Crime counts were assessed by the post-random assignment arrest counts (new offenses, including domestic violence crimes) and for severity; the official grading system of Utah, which breaks down crime types into six categories from misdemeanor to felony, was used to measure crime severity (a numerical score was assigned for each crime type). A Poisson-based regression model was used to assess differences between the two groups in terms of arrest counts and crime severity scores. The regression models included the constant, the treatment effect of BIP-plus-CP, and the prior offense number or crime severity score at baseline as a covariate.

Results: The regression models show a statistically significant reduction in the number of new offenses measured across the 24 months post-random assignment within the BIP-plus-CP group, resulting in a reduction of 37.8% Exp(B) = 0.6218 (p<0.0001). Findings for crime severity follow the same pattern for frequency, with the BIP-plus-CP group showing a 37.4% Exp(B) = 0.6, 257 (p<0.0001) reduction in the crime severity score. The results indicate that participants assigned to BIP-plus-CP show statistically significant reductions both in the number of new offenses and the crime severity score of those offenses.

Conclusions and Implications: The results suggest that the use of BIP-plus-CP not only reduced the number of new crimes but also reduced the severity of crimes by almost 40%. Integrating RJ approaches such as CP into interventions to address IPV is a viable approach and should be considered. Future research using qualitative approaches can offer an in-depth understanding of the experiences and perspectives of those who participated in the RJ programs.