Working with Perpetrators of Domestic Violence and Abuse: The Potential for Change

This chapter commences with a brief overview of the development of behavioural change programmes for perpetrators of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) in the UK. Sarah Hilder and Caroline Freeman highlight a number of academic discourses, which have been utilised to examine the commission of DVA, with more sophisticated understandings developing over time of the diverse characteristics of DVA perpetrators. They discuss the impact of competing approaches to programme intervention, influenced primarily by discourses rooted in psychology and feminism. The evaluation of perpetrator programmes remains problematic, although the recent Mirabal (Kelly, L., & Westmarland, N. (2015) Domestic Violence Perpetrator Programmes: Steps towards change: Project Mirabal final report. London and Durham, NC: London Metropolitan University and Durham University) study provided opportunity for broadening ideas on the victim-centred metrics that may be applied. The authors conclude by drawing upon desistance frameworks to argue the potential of combining programme interventions with a more holistic understanding of what may lead to an individual cessation from DVA.