Enhancing Coordinated Community Responses to Reduce Recidivism in Cases of Domestic Violence

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a project designed to enhance coordinated community responses by examining recidivism rates. Project enhancements included expanded danger assessment and information sharing among criminal justice practitioners and advocates. When compared to a baseline period, results indicated that offenders had significantly lower rates of recidivism after the project was implemented. There were steady declines in the number of recid-ivists over 3 years of the project, beginning in the pilot year and decreasing significantly during the intervention years. Logistic regression procedures found two variables that were signifi-cantly related to offenders not having recidivated during all years of the study: the offender hav-ing been court mandated to attend the Men’s Nonviolence Program and the offender having completed the program. There was evidence to support the use by probation officers of a danger assessment tool to predict recidivism