Partnership for Peace: A Court-Based Perpetrator-Intervention Programme in Grenada

Since 2005, Grenada has run Partnership for Peace (PfP), a court-based diversion programme developed with UN Women that lets magistrates mandate adjudicated male perpetrators of domestic violence into a 16-week, cohort-based psycho-educational programme as an alternative or complement to conventional sentencing. The same Eastern Caribbean model has also been used in Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Lucia, Belize, the British Virgin Islands and Guyana.

To provide an alternative or complement to conventional sentencing for adjudicated male perpetrators of domestic violence, engaging with local expressions of masculinity and the socio-ecological drivers of intimate-partner violence.

Magistrates mandate perpetrators into a 16-week cohort-based psycho-educational programme, sustained through partnerships among magistrate courts, police and social-service agencies.

A peer-reviewed 2018 evaluation (Evaluation and Program Planning, fieldwork 2008-2011) found that organic engagement strategies built into existing partnerships among courts, police and social services helped sustain the model's fidelity over time. A separate doctoral evaluation (University of South Florida) examined effects on participating men, their partners and programme stakeholders. Neither evaluation reports recidivism rates, completion statistics, or independently measured reductions in repeat violence.

The strength of outcome evidence remains limited despite the programme's unusual longevity and its status as one of the few Caribbean domestic-violence interventions to receive peer-reviewed academic evaluation at all.