The Drive Project — Intensive Case Management for High-Risk Domestic Abuse Perpetrators

The Drive Project is a partnership programme run jointly by Respect, SafeLives and Social Finance (the Drive Partnership, formed in 2015) that manages high-harm, high-risk and serial perpetrators of domestic abuse through intensive one-to-one case work, combining behaviour-change work with disruption tactics such as coordinated agency action.
An independent randomised evaluation by the University of Bristol (led by Professor Marianne Hester) ran from 2016 to 2019 across pilot sites in Essex, West Sussex and South Wales, following 506 perpetrators aged 17 to 81 who were referred because standard responses had failed to stop their abuse.
The evaluation found that among perpetrators completing Drive, physical abuse fell by 82%, sexual abuse by 88%, harassment and stalking by 75%, and jealous or controlling behaviour by 73%, compared with a comparison group receiving usual service responses. Independent domestic violence advisers reported reduced risk to victims in 82% of cases, and Drive perpetrators had fewer subsequent police-recorded incidents and were significantly less likely to be referred to a multi-agency risk conference a year after the programme ended.
Following the pilot, Drive expanded to seven police force areas in England and Wales, engaging 4,644 high-risk perpetrators and supporting 5,201 adult and 9,359 child victim-survivors between 2016 and 2023, funded through a mix of police and crime commissioner and local authority budgets.

Read the full analysis: https://safelives.org.uk/drive