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Good practice Imported

Ontario's Partner Assault Response (PAR) Programme

Canada · Toronto · See the Canada profile · See the Toronto profile

Evidence: Quasi-experimental Top 67% 52/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Ontario funds 63 mandatory Partner Assault Response programmes across all 54 court jurisdictions - 12-week counselling for domestic-violence offenders. A 2006 study of 1,000 matched offenders found less spousal reoffending but no overall recidivism drop.

63
Community-agency providers
54
Court jurisdictions covered
500 vs 500 offenders
Matched comparison sample (2001 cohort, tracked to end 2003)
Ontario's Partner Assault Response (PAR) Programme

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General
Period
2000–present
Keywords
gender-based violence, domestic violence, criminal justice, perpetrator intervention

Context

Ontario's Partner Assault Response (PAR) programme is a court-mandated, 12-week group counselling programme for people convicted of domestic-violence offences, delivered by 63 community agencies across all 54 provincial court jurisdictions.

Activities

It operates alongside Ontario's specialised Domestic Violence Courts, established in the early 2000s, with groups of 15-25 participants working through nine standardised curriculum topics.

Results

A Department of Justice Canada study matched 500 offenders convicted in a Domestic Violence Court with 500 convicted elsewhere, tracking reconvictions to end 2003: DVC-associated offenders were less likely to be reconvicted of a spousal or violent offence.

Conclusions

The report's own conclusion was explicit that findings 'did not demonstrate the influence of a DVC on reducing the overall likelihood of recidivism.'

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
63 community-agency providers, specialised Domestic Violence Court judges

Conditions for success

  • standardised nine-topic curriculum
  • groups of 15-25 participants

Common failure modes

  • government's own evaluation did not demonstrate a reduction in overall recidivism

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

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