Presented by Avraham Hoffmann at the ICPA annual conference, Netherlands October 2002

Description of the Community and the Needs Met

The Ministry of Labour and Welfare evaluates that in Israel approximately 200,000 women are battered by their husbands.

In recent years we observe an increase in the number of women that seek any help: 20,000 women turned to the police in 1998, in the year 2000 there were 21,500. In 1999, 4,000 families sought help from the centres that treat violence, in the following year there were 7,000 families. In 30% of them the husbands participated in therapy.

In prisons today there are 1,400 inmates incarcerated for domestic violence. There are also 500 inmates incarcerated for other offences, for which the problem of domestic violence was revealed during therapy. In 1997 there were only 570 inmates incarcerated for this reason. It is important to stress that a significant number of these inmates are incarcerated for the second and third time for this particular reason. Hence, we observe a changing tendency in the type of offences inmates are sentenced for – from drug related offences to domestic violence. Therefore, the Authority sees a necessity in creating a rehabilitation program especially designated for this population, and that in co-operation with the concerned therapeutic services and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

This violence phenomenon is defined as a social problem that necessitates a broad therapeutic approach and the co-operation of all the concerned services and organisations. The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs emphasises the systematic therapeutic approach that is obligated to include the battered women, the violent men and the children who witnessed the violence. Dealing with violent inmates must be a high priority. Differently from other inmates their offence was committed toward their relatives (not strangers).

Until now, each therapeutic service operated its anti-domestic violence program for its target population, without being able to ensure a continued therapy. Such a program is run in the Hermon prison. However it is unable to ensure a continued therapy in the community, which is not under its jurisdiction. Professionals state that such discontinued programs mean a waste of money. To resolve this problem, the Authority has initiated this project that is meant to ensure a comprehensive systemic therapy that continues with the whole family.

The Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority is mandated to deal with prisoners’ rehabilitation 4 to 6 month preceding their release and in the community during the year following their release from prison. During the pre-release period an individual rehabilitation program is set with each inmate.

Treating violent released inmates necessitates a unique therapy on both the comprehensive domestic level and on the personal individual level. It requires professional, skilled and experienced staff that knows all the different services that offer response to the unique needs of these patients and their families.

In this innovative project the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority co-operates with the Ministry Labour and Social Affairs. The project combines two therapy methods to create a new approach adapted to this particular population of inmates convicted for domestic violence. A population who’s number increases with time.

Domestic violence is different from offences that are committed outside the family in two (2) main aspects:

1. The offence was directed to a family member.
2. A legal connection and in many cases an emotional relation continues between the offender and his victim.

This distinction stresses the significance of the inmates’ stay in prison, their contact with their family during incarceration and their return home. Hence local committees were founded to deal with inmates incarcerated for domestic violence, to protect the victims and ensure that their return home during prison leaves or after their final release won’t heart the family members. The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs is currently preparing a set of rules (codex) concerning the function and working procedures of the anti-violence committees, and promotes their becoming statutory.

We know that most inmates that were sentenced for domestic violence complete their prison term (that is, they are not released for good behaviour after completing 2/3 of their prison term) and most of them return to live with their wives that were subjected to their violence. Even when there was a rehabilitation activity during incarceration, it usually stops after their release. The incarceration itself without continued therapy may cause further and escalating violence, because in many cases the wives’ complaints helped convict their husbands. In light of these facts, the need to found a hostel for released inmates that were sentenced for domestic violence (conjugal) is greater. These men form the hardest core of the violent men.

At present few therapeutic programs are intended for violent men:

1. Non-violence therapeutic groups in day centres. To date there are 34 local centres in different municipalities, that also deal with violent men. The programs include individual and group therapy. The treatment of the men is given in parallel with that of the wives and children.
2. “Beit Noam” – A residential hostel for violent men, that is intended to offer an intensive therapy for battering men who have been ordered by the courts to stay away from their family. The Hostel is designed as a home, to allow these men to go through a corrective experience, including taking responsibility for the different daily activities and chores. There are both individual and group therapy. Every morning the men go to work outside the Hostel. They stay in the Hostel for a period of 4 months. However, “Beit Noam” is not accepting released inmates.
3. The Prison Services initiated a program to train the social workers to treat violent men while incarcerated, since most of them go back to their homes after their release from prison. While incarcerated, they have little motivation to participate in therapy and most of them tend to deny their violence. Being aware of these facts the Prison Services works at developing the professional knowledge and expertise of its social workers. To date a group of 25 trained social workers treat domestic violence. They run therapy groups for inmates that were incarcerated for domestic violence. The Prison Service plans to spread out the professional knowledge on domestic violence among all its social workers. Following a success in the Hermon prison, the service looks into the possibility of opening a special prison cellblock for these inmates in which an extensive therapy will be introduced.
4. The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and the Prison Services have joint Anti-Violence Committees that discuss each violent inmate’s case upon his incarceration, and again before he is released from prison. Their purpose is to recommend and outline the time and place of his leaves, their early release or final release.

The Therapeutic Model

We have found out that some of these inmates have additional problems such as addiction to drugs or alcohol, and a lack of working habits. This proposed model of therapy within a hostel can include the therapeutic options adequate to treat the different problems: Dealing with the incarceration stigma, with the return to the workplace after a long period or with seeking a work position. The combination of delinquency and violence, violence and addiction requires a special therapeutic approach. Moreover, the violent inmates are separated from their families for many months sometimes years. Hence there is a need for a thorough preparation toward the reunion of the family and a comprehensive therapeutic approach to the offender as well as to the victim and family.

This project is designed as a complement to the existing services. Its purpose being to ensure the safety of women that are interested in their husbands’ return home, without taking into account the risk entailed by the separation the incarceration caused.

Aspects of therapy that are concerned with:

stopping the violence: the attacker’s responsibility, control of anger, sexuality, proper communication between the family members, providing the patient with positive communication tools as opposed to violence (the Beit Noam model).

delinquency and incarceration: The outcomes of being cut-off from society and returning back to it, dealing such as social stigma, employment, return home after a long separation from the wife and children. Working out the angers connected to this separation.

addiction: addicted patients use substances such as alcohol and drugs to solve problems by repressing them and running away from them. Therefore there is a need to provide them with positive tools to deal effectively with solving problems.

family and couple: In light of the violent and defective communication that existed for many years, there is a need to rehabilitate the couple (after stopping the violence) and enable a healthy and positive return back of the husband to his wife and children. Hence the importance for all the family members to participate in therapy, that will enable them to express themselves, go through the changes together and attain together a solution to the family problems.

Learning ways to behave and progressively take responsibility in the family: a violent inmate that is away from home for a long period, is cut off from his family’s daily life, and is not a part of what happens. Therefore he must be trained to progressively take part in house duties and chores. The treatment in the Hostel enables the creation of a relation with his spouse during therapy and to attain common decisions concerning the husbands’ return home and responsibilities.

Future accompaniment of the patients: The Beit Noam’s experience showed there was a difficulty to integrate the Hostels’ graduates in community therapy in spite of the crucial need. Hence as a pilot program, it is important to follow up its patients for a period of a year after they leave the Hostel to ensure the continuation and preservation of their rehabilitation.

The Target Population

This program is intended for inmates that were sentenced for violence towards their companion. A population characterised by many difficulties and needs. That is, they have additional problems of delinquency, drug and/or alcohol dependency, instability in employment, and malfunctioning in the family that is accompanied by severe violence. The released inmates will be referred to the program according to the following criteria:

• Drug free: have at least gone through a physical detoxification, during or after their imprisonment.
• Inmates that have started a therapeutic program in prison.
• Inmates that have participated in a pre-release program of the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs toward their absorption into the Hostel.
• Inmates that have been diagnosed as having the potential to rehabilitate and change.
• Inmates that have been violent particularly towards their companions (and not their children).
• Will be admitted also those that are known to the social services, during the first year following their release.

There will be 12 participants in each cycle of 6 months; That is, there will be 24 released inmates every year.

Goals

• Helping the released inmates to stop the violence in their family – while teaching them techniques of self-control of anger.
• Integrating these released inmates in a workplace.
• Providing them with normative behaviour patterns.
• Providing them with healthy parenting patterns.
• Enabling a profound psychological therapy to overcome psychological addictions.
• Enabling family therapy with their companion and children, to ensure a proper return home, after completing the prison term, according to the wife’s wish.

Implementation

1. Preparation stage: Employees are recruited and trained during a period of 4 to 6 months; A building for the hostel will be located and the equipment purchased.
2. Enlisting stage: Enlisting candidates for the program during a period of 3 months.
3. Operating stage: Absorbing the candidates, treating them according to the therapeutic program individually and in group therapy, in the couple therapy and simultaneously treating the children. – The duration of this stage is 6 months.
4. Follow-up stage: After completing the stay in the hostel, a social worker from the hostel will visit the graduates at home once every two weeks, will operate a group meeting twice a month and will monitor the gradual passage to community treatment.

General remarks:

1. There might be overlapping of stages. For example stages A and B.
2. There will be 4 to 5 cycles during the period of 3 years.
3. The activities will take place in the afternoons after the working hours.

Methods and Intervention

The hostel’s goal is to treat comprehensively the patients’ problems. 

• Locating candidates and the activities in prison:

The Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority’s counsellors – the Authority’s representative in prison in charge of developing the individual rehabilitation program before the release – will locate candidates for the Hostel, in co-operation with the prison social worker. After being located each inmate’s application will be examined by the Authority’s counsellor in co-operation with the relevant District’s Anti-violence Committees in the community. The Authority’s counsellor will check the health issues. Each candidate will be referred to the Authority’s Director General that will refer him to the Hostel’s direction. The decision to accept or refuse an inmate to the Hostel will be made after an Acceptance Committee and a careful examination of all the information about him. If a candidate is accepted, a detailed individual rehabilitation program will be set and presented to the Prison Services’ Release Committee. This program will include a 6 months stay in the Hostel and 6 additional months of therapy in the community. The release of the inmates after completing 2/3 of his sentence is stipulated by the Release Committee’s decision.

• Ways of intervention and the activities in the Hostel:

The hostel’s treatment is based upon the experience of the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority’s Hostels and the non-violence centres as well as the therapeutic model developed by “Beit Noam”. In addition are added issues related to released inmates and “clean” drug addicts. During the work with violent men, working procedures have been developed in “open group” and “train groups”. This means a division of the therapy into several subjects. It enables to absorb new residents at any time. During his 6 months stay in the hostel each resident will have participated in all the subjects.

The hostel is run like all the other Authority’s Hostels. That is, residents must start working within two weeks from their absorption to the hostel. Employment assistance is given by the Authority’s employment counsellor.

• The therapy will include the following parts:

1. Individual – intake, setting a therapeutic and administrative contract – the patient will receive an individual therapy at least once a week.
2. Group therapy:
   1. Therapy groups that will deal with the following subjects: Changing the behaviour and controlling anger, acquiring tools for self control and taking responsibility for personal behaviour, learning to be aware of the needs and desires of their companions, and how to communicate, parenting, sexuality, etc. among the methods used: psychodrama and art. These groups will meet 3 times a week.
   1. An open support group guided by a social worker.
   1. The formerly drug dependant residents will attend an N.A. support group once a week.
3. Family and Couple treatment:
   1. According to needs there will be a family and/or couple therapy once a week. The innovation of the program is that this therapy takes place in the Hostel before the patient’s return home. A social worker will contact the wife in order to convince her to join the therapy. The wife attends these meeting voluntarily. Thus in protected conditions and during an assessment process the ability to receive a family and couple therapy within the hostel will be evaluated. The therapy services in the community are not set to treat this kind of population according to the timetable of the release from prison due to waiting lists. Prevention of succession in therapy straight after release is most likely to cause interruption of the therapy.
   1. The inmate’s children will come with the mother to the treatment meetings. During the therapy they will be staying with a special guide for the children. According to needs, the children will take part in the family therapy.
4. Employment problems and Enrichment activities – one evening a week will be devoted to these activities: 12 meetings will focus on employment and 12 other on enrichment such as movie, museum, theatre plays, etc.
5. Creating an operational outline for taking responsibility for his home and family by paying bills, providing for subsistence, etc. that is, therapy will provide the patient with means that will enable him to participate in family chores and house expenses. During therapy the patient is obliged to allocate a part of his income for his family expenses.

• The leaves:

The leaves from the hostel are part of the treatment program of the inmates. All leaves are with the wife’s consent, and are given gradually in correspondence with the progress of the therapy and the conjugal relationships. And that in light of the police data that shows that 90% of the murders of women occurred during the divorce or separation process. This separation process is a protective and reassuring process for the wife since it is known that harsh and extreme violence expressed through murder occurs in most cases because of the women’s wish to separate.

• Preparation toward the return home:

Toward the end of the 6 months stay in the Hostel the Hostel’s management and the practitioner in the community will discuss the continued therapy in the community. If the family counsellor agrees with the couple that they should get divorced, or if the couple expresses such a request, an effort will be made to end the divorce process while the husband is still in the Hostel.

It is obvious that it is impossible to resolve all the problems in a period of 6 months. The aim is to advance the patient as much as possible, to enable him to be ready to reintegrate into his family. To ensure the endurance and strengthening of the treatment a social worker will continue the therapy in the patient’s home for a period of 6 months following his return home.

• The Hostels building:

Differently from the other Hostels that are set to help the hostels residents – this hostel must be different in size and aspect for the following reasons:

1. The multiplicity of the kind of treatments (individual, family, couple, and children) requires in addition to the bedrooms, 4 therapy rooms that will enable to conduct in parallel individual and family discussions, since most of the treatment is done in the afternoon after work.
2. There is a need for a room where the children can play, and in which there is the material needed for working with children while the parents are in treatment.
3. Because children are integrated in treatment, to ensure their safety it is recommended that the Hostel’s building should have one floor with a garden or playground where they can play – with no stairs that can endanger them.
4. Geographically the hostel should be easily accessible so the women can join the family therapy.
5. The Hostel will be situated in one of the major cities, in a region where there are a large number of released violent inmates.

• The co-operating organisations:

1. The Prison Services locates and refers candidates while they are still incarcerated.
2. The Welfare Services for the individual and family are responsible for running non-violence centres.
3. The Ministry of Interior Security and the Sacta-Rachi Foundation take part in financing this program.

• Innovative aspects:

Presently there are no programs that are willing to accept released inmates that caused domestic violence. Moreover, there is no comprehensive therapeutic program that addresses all the released inmates’ additional problems. The domestic violence necessitates a new method that is based on partial experiences of the Prisoner Rehabilitation Authority and other organisations. This program has also been created in a period in which the incarceration has supposedly solved the family problems, creating an illusion for the woman that the problem does not exist. As a result prisoners’ wives do not turn to the centres that deal with violence. The inmates themselves tend to deny the violence issue. Hence, the boarding framework that will allow preparing both the released inmate and his family – in particular his wife – for the renewed meeting is necessary.

This program deals comprehensively with the inmate’s other problems. Hence, he will be able to go back home free of the problems incarceration and release from prison created, and be ready to devote himself to his family.

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