EQUIPS Domestic Abuse Program — NSW Corrective Services' Mandatory Behaviour-Change Programme (Mixed Evaluation Evidence)

The EQUIPS Domestic Abuse Program is a mandatory 20-session, 40-hour group treatment programme run by Corrective Services NSW (part of the NSW Department of Communities and Justice) for men convicted of domestic violence offences who score medium-to-high risk on the Level of Service Inventory-Revised. Launched in 2015 to replace an earlier Domestic Abuse Program and folded into the wider EQUIPS suite in 2017, it is delivered statewide in prisons and in the community by trained facilitators, covering abuse identification, emotional regulation, understanding the offence, victim empathy and relationship skills.

The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR), the state's independent criminal-justice research agency, evaluated the programme and found only 21.8% of referred offenders completed it, a slightly lower general-reoffending rate in the treatment group that was not statistically distinguishable from zero, and no evidence of reduced domestic-violence reoffending. A later, separate propensity-score-matched analysis (953 matched pairs) reported that treatment completers took around 27% longer to a first violent reconviction and had roughly 15% lower reconviction rates at 33-month follow-up, though a 12-month analysis found no significant difference in domestic-violence-specific reoffending.

Caveat: the programme's own government evaluator cautions that any treatment effect 'is likely to be comparatively small', and the low completion rate (fewer than a quarter of referrals) means the population actually reached is a fraction of those ordered into the programme — this is included as a documented, evidence-based case rather than a proven success story.

Read the full analysis: https://bocsar.nsw.gov.au/documents/publications/cjb/cjb201-250/cjb211-report-evaluation-of-the-equips-domestic-abuse-2018.pdf