Auditor: Systemic failures harm CA domestic violence program

The Associated Press ^ | October 18, 2022 | By DON THOMPSON

[Oldeconomybuyer]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Nearly half of California domestic violence offenders failed to complete a required program designed to prevent future assaults and judges failed to impose new sanctions almost every time, the state auditor said Tuesday.

California requires domestic violence offenders who are placed on probation to take year-long batterer intervention classes. But auditors found that nearly half did not complete them. County probation departments did not report more than half the violations to the courts. And the courts did not impose any additional punishment to enforce the requirement in 90% of the cases where judges were told of the violations.

As a result of what auditors called long-running “systemic failures,” the requirement “had limited impact in reducing domestic violence,” Acting California State Auditor Michael Tilden said. The report comes after a state watchdog agency last year estimated that a third of women and a quarter of men in California will experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

The programs offered for a fee by various providers generally include weekly two-hour classes with group discussions and ways to hold offenders accountable for the violence they bring to a relationship. They can be effective, auditors found in tracking a sample of 100 offenders: Nearly two-thirds of program dropouts went on to commit new domestic violence or other abuse-related crimes. By contrast, 20% of offenders who completed the program committed new crimes.

[Fido969]

Abusers know how to work the system. Innocent men get sucked into it and chewed up.

[Seruzawa]

Those programs do nothing anyhow. Psychology is nothing but pseudoscience.