New Zealand's Ministry of Justice Non-Violence Programme Network

Since 1 October 2014, New Zealand's Ministry of Justice has funded a national network of around 48 approved providers delivering non-violence programmes, adult safety programmes and Kaupapa Māori programmes for people involved in family violence, with courts referring more than 6,000 people a year.
A Ministry-commissioned evaluation published in November 2018 (Paulin, Mossman, Wehipeihana, Lennan, Kaiwai, Carswell et al.) matched 434 offenders who attended a non-violence programme after a non-mandated court referral with 434 comparable offenders who did not attend, using propensity-score matching. Over the following 12 months, the treatment group committed up to 46% fewer family-violence offences and 49% fewer non-family-violence offences than matched controls — evidence the evaluators called 'reasonably strong' for this specific referral pathway, which covers roughly one-third of participants. Programme completion in this cohort was 85%.
Self-reported outcomes from 488 programme users surveyed by providers in 2017, and from 40 users interviewed for the evaluation, lent further support, describing reduced violence, better self-control and improved relationships.
A 1News investigation published in July 2023 raised serious cautions: with 48 providers using inconsistent, largely completion-based measures of success, two men who had completed Ministry-funded non-violence programmes went on to commit high-profile fatal violence, including the killer of Grace Millane. Provider and researcher voices in the same investigation argued that common 8-week programmes fall well short of the 20 weeks research suggests is needed, and that once a court mandate ends there is no mechanism to track longer-term behaviour. New Zealand's Justice Minister subsequently requested updated recidivism data on programme completers.

Read the full analysis: https://www.justice.govt.nz/justice-sector-policy/research-data/evaluation-of-domestic-violence-programmes/