Almost half the people locked up in Kansas prisons admit they have a history of domestic violence getting the cops called after an argument with a partner, having a restraining order against them or serving time for beating or threatening a family member or partner.
Some of those people end up in batterer intervention programs sometimes while theyre behind bars, other times during probation or parole. The weekly workshops stretch over months, aiming to pinpoint what drives someone to violence, and searching for ways to break those cycles.
But waiting lists, program costs and other barriers mean that roughly half of the people in those programs never finish. The state attorney generals office reports that last year 1,134 people completed state-certified batterer intervention programs in Kansas, out of a total 2,404 participants. That includes programs run by nonprofit organizations and by the Kansas Department of Corrections.
The completion rate for the states program is lower than the overall rate. Out of 487 participants in 2018, 20 people completed the program while incarcerated at the Lansing Correctional Facility and 47 finished it while on parole.
Those statistics reflect the difficulty of leaving prison, the stringent requirements of parole or probation and the emotional stress of confronting ones own history of violence, say the people who run the programs.
People come here afraid. They dont want to be here, said Steve Halley, the director of Family Peace Initiative, an organization that provides batterer intervention services in the Shawnee County area and helped develop a curriculum used statewide. They dont want to be vulnerable. And changing and ending cruelty is a very vulnerable process.
Halleys program requires at least 25 weekly sessions of learning about trauma, gender roles and personal responsibility in groups of about eight to 12. Men and women are placed in separate groups. About half of the people drop out in the first five to eight weeks.
Of those who complete the program, about 22% committed domestic violence again. Of those who left early, 44% committed another act of domestic violence, according to the Shawnee County District Attorneys Office.
Each session costs $35, with additional costs for assessment and orientation sessions. The program offers a sliding scale for people who are unemployed, but even that cost can be a burden for participants, about 80 percent of whom have been mandated to attend by a court, Halley said.
By far were serving, basically, the poor, he said. Their life is so chaotic that to be able to make it, to attend a class once a week for six months, is a huge request.
Rural batterer intervention programs face similar challenges.
But a program based in Hays, in northwestern Kansas, sees completion rates of about 90%, well above the statewide average. Its attendees come from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds and nearly 20 counties in a sparsely populated part of the state, said Dian Organ and Nance Munderloh, who run the program.
They said court orders mandating the program contribute to the high completion rate.
Our people, Organ said, want to get off of supervision.
Many of their attendees have to carpool because they dont have drivers licenses or access to public transportation. Some have to drive for almost two hours. That commute can complicate the typical barriers to attending several months of classes: the cost, low-paying jobs, struggles with addiction and unstable housing.
