An 8-Year Recidivism Follow-Up of Domestic Violence Court participants

This study examines recidivism differences between Domestic Violence Court participants and court-convicted domestic abusers prior to the advent of the Domestic Violence Court. Unlike previous short-term evaluations of Domestic Violence Courts, the current study addresses a key gap in the literature by using a longer, 8-year follow-up period to assess the sustained impact of the Domestic Violence Court program on reoffending. Court participants were tracked over an eight-period following an initial, short-term evaluation of the Domestic Violence Court program. Statistical adjustments for age and prior criminal history revealed that domestic violence court participants were more likely than non-program participants to be re-convicted for a domestic violence offense. No group differences were observed for non-domestic violence-related offenses. Failure to implement the Risk-Need-Responsivity framework may have implications for the negative findings. And unlike Drug Courts, this Domestic Violence Court fails to apply a rewards-sanction strategy to induce offender compliance. Study limitations and directions for future research are discussed.