Corrective-Educational Programmes for Domestic Violence Perpetrators — Poland's Court-Linked National Framework

Since Poland's 2005 Act on Counteracting Domestic Violence, developing and running programy korekcyjno-edukacyjne (corrective-educational programmes) for people who use domestic violence has been a state task delegated to Poland's counties (powiats); a Ministry of Family and Social Policy regulation of 20 June 2023 standardized programme content, minimum contact hours, and facilitator qualifications nationwide.
Participants are referred by courts (as a probation condition tied to a suspended sentence or conditional release), by police and social-services 'Blue Card' domestic-violence procedures, by interdisciplinary anti-violence teams, or on a voluntary basis; programmes combine group psycho-educational sessions on taking responsibility and non-violent conflict resolution.
Official monitoring shows a persistent decline in court-ordered referrals — from 875 in 2019 to 837 (2020), 901 (2021), 773 (2022) and 655 in 2023 — even as roughly 4,300 perpetrators received suspended sentences for domestic violence offences that year, a gap flagged by Poland's national Niebieska Linia (Blue Line) violence-prevention institute as an under-used resource. Regional data from Podlaskie province similarly shows only about 6% of registered perpetrators enter a programme, though 78% of those who start complete the full cycle.

Read the full analysis: https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/DocDetails.xsp?id=WDU20230001163