International surveys have show that roughly 33 per cent of adult women will experience abuse caused by a male partner. Domestic violence is one of the top issues affecting women’s health in Australia. Therefore there is a need for programs that can help to reduce the risk of women having to experience domestic violence. The paper “Integrated responses to domestic violence: Legally mandated intervention programs for male perpetrators” was published in “Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 404” and is a study that was undertaken by Day et. al. in order to explore the results of an Australian program which was designed to deal with men that are perpetrators of domestic violence. These programs were required by law as part of a treatment program. The data demonstrated that there were some positive benefits in men that had participated in the program. However more research needs to be done in order to determine just how much change would come from the programs to see if they actually result in real change for the men’s lives and problems with domestic violence.

Domestic violence is a broad term that typically refers to abuse among intimate partners. Domestic violence may also extend to family violence in which the perpetrator is causes similar abuse to the children or to other family members. In addition the abuse can also cause what is known as secondary victimisation in which the other members of the family witness the violence and suffer psychological damage as a result of being involved with the situation.

Domestic violence abuse can have other consequences which are mainly death or severe physical injury. Two thirds of women that are killed are actually murdered by their husbands or other live-in partner. The most recent statistics from Australia on homicide rates demonstrate that out of 113 incidents with victims that are female, nearly two-thirds of them reported that they had been involved in a domestic disputes.

Programs for men who are the perpetrators of domestic violence began in Australia around the late 1970s. These programs were developed in the context that the victim was the centre focus of the treatment. However the programs have also done great deal in trying to get men to change their attitudes towards relationship issues and women in general in order to get them to stop the domestic violence acts.

This paper aims to review the data from analysing these programs and in the paper the data with regards to community based services in Queensland is being reported. As the weeks of the program progress and the perpetrators go through the trials of the program, the risk of reoffending dropped.

In addition, the data also noted that the perpetrators perceptions about reoffending changed as the weeks of the program progressed. Since the program also worked with the victims, the study was also able to track the thoughts of the victims on whether the perpetrator was likely to reoffend. The study data indicated that there was a significant drop off there as well.

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