duluth model

It is estimated that nearly 8.7 million women worldwide are abused by a former or current intimate partner every year (Day, Chung, O’Leary, & Carson, 2009). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, intimate partner violence (IPV) is defined as psychological, sexual, or physical harm from a current or former spouse or partner; this can include threats, coercion, and stalking (Black et al., 2011). It is estimated that 39 million women, about 1 in every 4, in the United States has been severely physically harmed by an intimate partner (Black et al., 2011).

Intimate partner violence is significant to the field of victim studies because it involves someone in a relationship being abused physically, emotional, or sexually, therefore someone in the relationship is a victim and needs help getting out of or fixing the situation. It is an epidemic that needs to be taken care of. “The need for effective offender treatment programs is imperative for the overall well being of victims of IPV and the community as a whole” (Herman, Rotunda, Williamson, & Vodanovich, 2014, p. 2). The Duluth Model is a program that reduces men’s violence against their intimate partner. The purpose of this paper is to determine if the Duluth Model effectively does what is it intended to do.

The Duluth Model is a feminist, cognitive-behavioral approach to educating men on how to lead a non-violent life and relationship (Gondolf, 2007); Ellen Pence and Michael Paymar were the main contributors (Mills, 2008). The Duluth Model is comprised of the Power and Control Wheel, video vignettes, control logs, and the Equality Wheel. Each of these will be discussed in greater detail later in the paper.

In Duluth, Minnesota, after a brutal domestic homic...

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... probation or a control group, which included only probation. Both the experimental and control group had a recidivism rate of 24% one year after probation and the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of the offenders did not seem to change (Feder & Dugan, 2002). The results of this experiment indicated that there was no significant difference between men participating in the Duluth Model compared to the offenders who just did probation. An issue in the experiment was that only 29% of the men assigned to go to the intervention programs actually attended, so the researchers separated the results of the offenders who attended from the offenders who did not attend the entire program (Feder & Dugan, 2002). These results indicated that the men willing to attend were less likely to reoffend compared to the men who did not wish to attend the program (Feder & Dugan, 2002).