An Evaluation of a Court-Mandated Batterer Intervention Program: Investigating Differential Program Effect for African

Objective: The purpose of this study is to (a) evaluate a 16-week batterer intervention program by investigating changes in psychological variables related to abuse between pretreatment and posttreat-ment assessments in a sample of women involuntarily placed in treatment and (b) to investigate the dif-ferential effectiveness of this same batterer intervention program for African American and White batterers. Method: The study employed a secondary analysis of 59 treatment completers. Results: The findings of this study suggest that the court-ordered batterers constituting this sample demonstrate sig-nificant changes, in the desired direction, on psychological variables related to domestic violence, as a result of participation in a court-mandated treatment program, and there was no significant differ-ence in terms of magnitude of change on these same psychological variables between African American and White batterers, indicating that the treatment program was reaching both groups equally well. Conclusion: Implications of the findings for social workers were explored and discussed