Why Perpetrator Intervention Program Completion Certificates Are Dangerous

David Mandel, CEO and founder of the Safe & Together Institute, argues that completion certificates from perpetrator intervention programs can put adult and child survivors at real risk when they measure attendance rather than genuine behaviour change. In this white paper, he proposes a three-part rubric—naming the behaviours, claiming the harm, and making real change—for courts, child welfare workers, and evaluators to assess whether a perpetrator has actually changed.

Mandel’s rubric asks three questions of any perpetrator’s progress: Has he admitted to a meaningful portion of what he’s done, rather than a token acknowledgement of minor behaviour? Can he describe the impact of his abuse on himself and others? And what relevant changes has he actually made to his behaviour pattern? Judges, best-interest attorneys, and multi-disciplinary teams can use these same three questions to guide their own assessments rather than relying on a program’s letter of completion.

Completion letters that reflect only session attendance can convince a judge to grant unsupervised access, convince a survivor to give a perpetrator another chance, or create pressure on her to forgive and forget—without any evidence that his pattern of coercive control has actually changed. Mandel writes that real change should be defined by the people he’s harmed, not by program staff, and that cessation of physical violence alone is an incomplete measure: survivors and their children are also owed freedom from coercive control, safe and shared parenting, and a relationship built on respect.