Service to Reduce Violent Behaviour — Latvia's Nationwide State-Funded Perpetrator Programme

Latvia's Cabinet of Ministers Regulation No.790 (23 December 2014) established a state-funded "social rehabilitation service for adult persons who have suffered violence and persons who have committed violence," creating, for the first time, a parallel funded track for perpetrators alongside victim services. The perpetrator track, commonly called the "service to reduce violent behaviour," is open to anyone facing administrative or criminal proceedings linked to violence, anyone flagged by police, a social service or an orphan's court as having behaved violently or threatened violence, anyone self-referring out of fear of becoming violent, and anyone referred by the State Probation Service.
The whole of Latvia is served by a single procured national provider, SIA "Macibu centrs MKB," offering either up to 16 individual 45-minute consultations or a 16-session, two-hour group programme for up to 12 participants, aimed at reducing and preventing further violence risk. It runs alongside the State Probation Service's own "Building Respectful Relationships" programme for people under supervision, and Prison Administration resocialisation programmes for convicted offenders.
Latvia's 2025 state report to GREVIO records 509 people using the service in 2019, 492 in 2020, 445 in 2021 (21 court/judge-ordered), 708 in 2022 (154 court/judge-ordered) and 805 in 2023 (267 court/judge-ordered) — a rising trend accompanied by rising state funding (EUR 545,531 in 2022; EUR 719,487 in 2023). The same report states plainly that "since 2015, no measures have been taken to assess the impact" of the service, with a formal evaluation only planned under a forthcoming EU-funded project — an honest gap the state itself has flagged rather than concealed.

Read the full analysis: https://www.lm.gov.lv/lv/socialas-rehabilitacijas-pakalpojumi