Published in Mountain
Democrat
April 30, 2014
Batterers' Intervention
Recidivism Rates Lowest Known to Date
The El Dorado County District Attorney's
office confirmed that the male participants who graduated from The Center for
Violence-Free Relationships' batterers intervention program in 2008, who
resided in El Dorado County, did not get prosecuted for any domestic violence
charges after five years. This means that there was 0 percent recidivism after
a five year follow up, the lowest recidivism known for a batter intervention
program to date.
The Sonoma County and Santa Clara County
District Attorney's office also assisted in confirming the 0% recidivism (where
it was found that participants resided in these counties when they picked up
their initial domestic violence charges).
Apparently, the findings were found in
the same manner that the Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (DAIP) used in
collecting their data. The DAIP (which uses the well-known Duluth Model) had
the lowest recidivism rates prior to this discovery.
"This is stunning," said Eddie
Zacapa, who was The Center's Positive Solutions Coordinator at the time of the
discovery. "This is very compelling because the lowest recidivism prior to
this was 40 percent after a five year period. To be a part of this is historic
and brings hope to our community that we can end domestic violence. I am so
proud of all the people who were a part of making this happen."
The DAIP has done two studies where they
tracked graduates from their program. In one study they found that 40 percent
picked up a new domestic violence prosecution after five years. In the second
study they found that 32 percent did not reoffend over eight years. The
national average according to the Washington Center for Court Research
indicates that 45 percent of all DV offenders commit another domestic violence
crime within five years.
Zacapa, who wrote the batterers'
intervention curriculum that is still being used at The Center, also trained
the facilitators at The Center in Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Nonviolent
Communication was founded by Marshall Rosenberg 40 years ago and is being used
all over the world.
"I am committed to sharing with
other programs and counties what I believe contributed to these
statistics," Zacapa said.
Zacapa, who is currently providing workshops
in El Dorado County with Life Enriching Communication, is in the process of
writing a book on how to create a successful batterers' intervention program.
