Intimate partner violence in prisoners: Toward effective assessment and intervention

Highlights

• Identifies significant issues in identifying domestic violence in prisoners.

• Offers specific recommendations for further research and service development.

• Identifies the need for improved systems of assessment.

• Calls for the development of treatment programs and integrated victim support.

Abstract

This paper reviews the significant challenges that are involved in the development of services for perpetrators of intimate partner violence who are in prison. It is suggested that difficulties in accurately identifying intimate partner violence, reliably assessing risk of re-offense, and in identifying offending behavior programs that meet the specific needs of prisoners have limited the development of services in this area. As a result it is argued that unique and complex victim related issues that arise during incarceration and post-release are not adequately recognized in current correctional assessment and case management systems. Four avenues for future research and service development in this area are identified, with a view to developing the role that correctional services have to play in preventing intimate partner violence.

Introduction

Violence against women has been described by some as having reached epidemic proportions (Alhabib, Nur, & Jones, 2010). While this may be an artifact of how violence is measured, large population based surveys, such as that conducted by Perilla, Lippy, Rosales, and Serrata (2011), suggest that at least one in ten women in the United States will be a victim of intimate partner violence at some point in their life. When these prevalence rates are considered in light of what is known about the harmful effects of victimization (Golding, 1999), the case for implementing a broad range of initiatives that can prevent intimate partner violence becomes compelling. This includes those that target known offenders given that rates of recidivism among this group are particularly high (see Davis, Lurigio, & Herman, 2007), with data suggesting that, on average, victims of intimate partner violence will be re-victimized 20 times per year (Home Office, 2004). It follows that interventions that are even modestly successful in preventing recidivism in known offenders have the potential to have a profound impact on community safety.

Although correctional services are responsible for the management and rehabilitation of some of the highest risk and most dangerous offenders, there have been few published accounts of how correctional administrations have developed policies, services, and programs to reduce the risk of recidivism in domestically violent prisoners. The aim of this paper is to identify and understand some of the challenges that are associated with providing effective intervention in the prison setting. We suggest that the unique nature of intimate partner violence creates difficulties in accurately identifying the need for intervention in prison populations, that there are particular issues associated with assessing risk of re-offending in prisoners, and that relatively little is known about the effectiveness of behavior change programs that are delivered in the prison setting. Our focus in this paper is on intimate partner violence perpetrated by men against women. Although the term broadly refers to “acts of violence that occur between people who have, or have had, an intimate relationship in domestic settings” (Mitchell, 2011, p.1), the majority of serious violence that occurs in the home is committed by men against women. It is nonetheless acknowledged that intimate partner violence can also be perpetrated by women and occur in same sex-relationships (Johnson, 2011, Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al., 2000, Oriel, 2012). Consequently, the arguments presented here likely also apply to female incarcerated offenders.