Domestic Violence Perpetrator Programs in Europe, Part II: A Systematic Review of the State of Evidence

In Part II of this article, we present the results of a systematic review of European evidence on the effectiveness of domestic violence perpetrator programs. After searching through 10,446 titles, we discovered only 12 studies that evaluated the effectiveness of a perpetrator program in some systematic manner. The studies applied treatment to a total of 1,586 domestic violence perpetrators, and the sample sizes ranged from 9 to 322. Although the evaluations showed various positive effects after treatment, methodological problems relating to the evaluation designs do not allow attribution of these findings to the programs. Overall, the methodological quality of the evaluations is insufficient to derive firm conclusions and estimate an effect size. Accordingly, one cannot claim that one programmatic approach is superior to another. Evaluation of domestic violence perpetrator treatment in Europe must be improved and programs should become more tailored to the characteristics of the participants.