Dallas, Texas – With its innovative strategy to fight domestic violence by concentrating on rehabilitating offenders instead of only helping victims, a ground-breaking program called The Family Place has sparked a lot of attention in Dallas. Designed to assist violent offenders change their abusive behaviors using a disciplined, instructional approach, the Battering Intervention and Prevention Program (BIPP)
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This unique program makes use of the Duluth Change tendencies curriculum, an all-encompassing approach meant to enable individuals identify, face, and change their violent tendencies. BIPP seeks to teach love and compassion to those who have formerly turned to violence as a form of control. Usually court-ordered, the program guarantees that participants take responsibility for going through this transforming process.
“The battering and intervention program is a program that’s designed for offenders to change their abusive behaviors if they choose,” explained Tiffany Tate, president and CEO of The Family Place, to KDFW. ” We look at internally how many people return to our program and how many victims are re-offended by people that were in our program, and our recidivism rate is about 1%.”
Through its hotline, The Family Place answered an astounding 26,000 calls in 2023 from people looking for helpful resources or escape from domestic abuse events. Despite these large numbers, the BIPP program has had encouraging results. Of the 315 program attendees last year—285 men and 30 women—only around 1% have re-offended.
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One participant, who wanted to be known just as Michael, related his own path through the program. Michael has noticed an important shift in his behavior since he joined BIPP after being detained several times over a year and a half for connected charges. Currently spanning a 30-week period, he is attending rigorous 90-minute group counseling sessions.
Michael said he was engaged in a violent cycle of arrests before the program and that he has not run across any altercations with law enforcement while beginning the BIPP. The program actually captures what each person contributes. Michael went on to say that everyone may realize actual change—not only for themselves but for everyone around them—if one follows the guidelines and is honest with themselves.
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Michael’s narrative is evidence of BIPP’s ability to produce real transformation in people who have battled violent conduct. Participants like Michael are learning to stop the cycle of violence that once ruled their life by pledging to follow the program’s guidelines and facing their actions.
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The low re-offending rate as the program develops emphasizes the need of emphasizing offender rehabilitation in the battle against domestic violence. The Family Place’s project marks a major change toward tackling the underlying causes of domestic violence, therefore opening the path for a more all-encompassing solution for this ubiquitous problem.
For BIPP information, visit www.familyplace.org/services/ourservices#service12.
