# Violence Against Women Act grants to Minnesota The sources gathered for this record contain no Violence Against Women Act grant amounts, award dates, grantee lists or statutory citations for Minnesota. They do document federal Department of Justice funding to projects of Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, a Duluth nonprofit incorporated as Minnesota Program Development, Inc. (MPDI), whose programs include the [[Domestic Abuse Intervention Project]]. In 1996 the Department's Violence Against Indian Women Office funded the Mending the Sacred Hoop Technical Assistance Project to train and assist designated Native American tribal grantees. In 2017 the agency completed a five-year Blueprint for Safety Demonstration Project funded by the Office on Violence Against Women.[^1] MPDI's organizational description states that Mending the Sacred Hoop assists tribes "funded by the US Department of Justice, Violence Against Women Grants Office".[^2] The record does not establish the statute under which any of these awards was made, or its amount.[^1] Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs describes the [[Duluth model]], developed in Duluth, [[Minnesota]], in 1980–81, as an inter-agency approach "that brings justice, human service, and community interventions together around the primary goal of protecting victims from ongoing abuse". It lists among the model's defining features intervention strategies that it calls empirically tested.[^3] Its 2015 definition states that the model "has been widely successful in offering greater victim protection and reducing repeat acts of violence in many different communities". It adds that "it has not been successful everywhere".[^4] Evaluations published by the Department of Justice measured the model's outcomes. A June 2003 [[National Institute of Justice]] special report called the Duluth model "the most common form of BIP in the Nation" and noted that "many States mandate that BIPs conform to the Duluth model". It stated that "recent evaluations based on more rigorous designs find little or no reduction" in battering, and that the methodological limits of nearly all evaluations "make it impossible to say how effective BIPs are".[^5] The report states that its findings are the authors' and do not reflect the Department's official position.[^6] A January 2004 meta-analysis of 22 studies, catalogued by the Office of Justice Programs, found "no differences in effect sizes in comparing Duluth model vs. CBT-type interventions". It also found treatment effects "in the small range, meaning that the current interventions have a minimal impact on reducing recidivism beyond the effect of being arrested".[^7] ## Who Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs was incorporated as a nonprofit in 1980 under the name Minnesota Program Development, Inc. Its first project, the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP), began with three employees in a kitchen of the Duluth Community Health Center.[^8] The agency's own documents give different counts for the founding collaboration. Its 2017 history states that nine city, county and private agencies adopted coordinated policies; that history's 1981 entry records eight agencies, and its 1982 entry records nine.[^8] Its 2015 definition counts eleven agencies, including 911, police, [[sheriff]]'s and prosecutors' offices, probation, the criminal and civil court benches, the local battered women's shelter, three mental health agencies and DAIP.[^9] MPDI is governed by a statewide board of directors. It is organized into three programs: the Duluth Core Programs, the [[Battered Women's Justice Project]], and Mending the Sacred Hoop.[^2] The Battered Women's Justice Project was formed in 1993 with Department of Health and Human Services funding, in collaboration with three domestic violence programs.[^10] The 2003 NIJ report was issued under Attorney General John Ashcroft and NIJ Director Sarah V. Hart. The studies it reports were supported by NIJ grants 94-IJ-CX-0047 and 96-WT-NX-0008.[^6] ## What Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs describes the model as "an ever evolving way of thinking about how a community works together to end domestic violence". According to the agency, a community using it has shared policies across criminal and civil justice agencies "from 911 to the courts". Such a community also offers court-ordered educational groups for batterers and works to change societal conditions that support men's use of tactics of power and control over women.[^11] The NIJ report classed the Duluth model as a psychoeducational program "based on the feminist theory that patriarchal ideology, which encourages men to control their partners, causes domestic violence".[^12] The Power and Control wheel was created in 1982 by Ellen Pence, Coral McDonnell and Michael Paymar for a court-ordered curriculum for men who batter. It drew on support and educational groups of battered women in Duluth, and by 1984 the same designers had developed the Equality Wheel.[^13] The agency's 2017 history gives a different date: it records that in 1983 women in its neighborhood groups developed the wheel.[^14] ## When - 1980: DAIP organizes under MPDI. At the request of the Duluth shelter (Women's Coalition), Duluth is selected as the site of a pilot criminal justice reform project.[^15] - 1981: Duluth police issue the experimental "mandatory arrest policy", and eight agencies agree on experimental guidelines.[^8] - 1982: Nine agencies make the experimental policies permanent. The court raises mandated abuser sessions from eight to twelve weeks.[^16] - 1985: Mandated sessions rise from twelve to twenty-six weeks. The prosecutor's "no drop" policy is eliminated, and conviction rates "gradually fall from 80% to below 47%".[^16] - 1987: The prosecutor's office returns to subpoenaing victims.[^16] The City of Duluth receives the John F. Kennedy School of Government award from the Ford Foundation for its domestic assault policy changes.[^17] - 1989: Police adopt a policy eliminating arrests in self-defense cases. A five-year recidivism study of 1985 arrests is completed, and the National Training Project is organized.[^17] - 1993: HHS funds MPDI to form the Battered Women's Justice Project.[^10] - 1996: The DOJ Violence Against Indian Women Office funds the Mending the Sacred Hoop Technical Assistance Project.[^1] - 1997: DAIP and the Law Enforcement Resource Center of [[Minneapolis]] produce the curriculum *Domestic Violence: The Law Enforcement Response*.[^18] - 1999: NIJ awards MPDI a grant to study the impact of court intervention on Native American women.[^18] - June 2003: NIJ publishes *Batterer Intervention Programs: Where Do We Go From Here?* (NCJ 195079).[^5] The same year, DAIP renames its curriculum *Power and Control: Tactics of Men Who Batter* as *Creating a Process of Change for Men Who Batter*.[^18] - January 2004: Babcock, Green and Robie publish their meta-analysis in *Clinical Psychology Review* 23(8).[^7] - 2010: The Domestic Violence Response Team is created. It joins the Duluth Police Department, St. Louis County Sheriff's Office, Arrowhead Regional Corrections, DAIP and Safe Haven Shelter for Battered Women, and is housed in the Duluth Police Department.[^19] - 2014: The Duluth Coordinated Community Response is named World's Best Policy to address violence against women and girls by United Nations Women, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the World Future Council.[^19] - 2017: The Office on Violence Against Women–funded Blueprint for Safety Demonstration Project is completed.[^1] ## Where The model was conceived in Duluth, which the agency describes as a small working-class city in northern Minnesota. Its organizers chose Duluth as the Minnesota city in which to bring criminal, civil justice and community agencies together.[^20] In 1982 DAIP consulted with Range Women Advocates to adapt the model in four rural mining communities in northern Minnesota. The agency states that its work is now found "in every state".[^15] The federal experiments that tested Duluth-model programs were conducted outside Minnesota, in Broward County, Florida, and Brooklyn, New York. In Broward County, each of the five county-certified batterer treatment programs used the Duluth model.[^21] ## Why The model's stated purpose is victim protection. Under it, intervention "must protect victims of ongoing abuse (battering)" and must hold perpetrators and intervening practitioners accountable for victim safety. It must also offer offenders an opportunity to change and ensure them due process.[^22] The NIJ report states that batterer intervention programs "were introduced as a way to hold batterers accountable without incarcerating them". It describes them as a response to victims who wanted the battering to stop but did not want their partners jailed.[^23] The record does not establish why federal grant offices funded the Minnesota projects named above.[^1] ## How The 2015 definition sets out four strategic principles:[^22] - infrastructure changes in the agencies that process cases, including inter-agency tracking and accountability systems; - a strategy centered on victim safety; - agency participation as collaborating partners; - consistent accountability for abusers, through mandatory arrest of primary aggressors, evidence-based prosecution, jail sentences that escalate for repeated acts, court-ordered educational groups for men who batter, and DAIP tracking of offenders. The wheel's designers wrote that it "is not a theory" but "a conceptual tool". They also wrote that the battered women they consulted did not identify a desire for power or control as their partners' motive.[^24] In the Broward County experiment, men assigned to treatment received one year of probation and 26 weeks of group counseling. Men in the control group received probation only.[^21] ## How much None of the sources gives a dollar figure for any Violence Against Women Act grant to Minnesota or to MPDI. The agency's history names funders without amounts:[^25] - a 1990 Minnesota Lawyer's Trust Fund grant to develop prosecutors' guidelines; - the 1993 HHS funding for the Battered Women's Justice Project; - the 1996 Violence Against Indian Women Office award; - a 1999 NIJ research grant; - the Office on Violence Against Women's funding of the Blueprint for Safety project, completed in 2017. The history describes the 1989 National Training Project as organized "to build an ongoing funding source" for the Visitation Center, DAIP and the Women's Action Group.[^17] ## How many - Founding collaboration: nine agencies according to the 2017 history, eleven according to the 2015 definition.[^8][^9] - Mandated abuser sessions: eight weeks, then twelve (1982), then twenty-six (1985). After the 1985 end of the "no drop" policy, conviction rates fell from 80% to below 47%.[^16] - The Power and Control and Equality wheels have been translated into more than 30 languages and more than 20 cultural contexts.[^24] - MPDI's 1998 national conference in Duluth drew more than 500 attendees.[^26] - The NIJ report counts more than 35 published evaluations of batterer intervention programs.[^12] - Broward County sample: of 446 cases, 42 were dropped and judges moved 14 control-group men into treatment, leaving 216 men in treatment and 188 in control.[^27] - Broward County outcomes: 24 percent of men in both groups were rearrested within their year on probation. Probation violations were cited for 48 percent of the experimental group and 45 percent of the control group, a difference the study found not significant.[^27] - Brooklyn: only men in the 26-week program had significantly fewer official complaints than the control group at 6 and 12 months. Men in the 8-week program showed no difference, and no group differed in attitudes toward domestic violence.[^28] - The 2004 meta-analysis reviewed 22 studies.[^7] ## Notes [^1]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition* (2017) — 1996 DOJ Violence Against Indian Women Office funding to Mending the Sacred Hoop Technical Assistance Project; 2017 completion of the Office on Violence Against Women–funded Blueprint for Safety Demonstration Project. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^2]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition*, "Organizational Structure" (2017) — MPDI's statewide board and three programs; Mending the Sacred Hoop's assistance to tribes funded by the DOJ Violence Against Women Grants Office. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^3]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *Definition of the Duluth Model* (June 2015) — the model's self-description as an inter-agency approach and its listed characteristics. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Definition-of-Duluth-Model-June-2015.pdf [^4]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *Definition of the Duluth Model* (June 2015), p. 4 — the agency's statements of the model's success and its limits. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Definition-of-Duluth-Model-June-2015.pdf [^5]: National Institute of Justice, *Batterer Intervention Programs: Where Do We Go From Here?*, Special Report, NCJ 195079 (June 2003) — prevalence of the Duluth model; state mandates; findings of rigorous evaluations. https://www.ojp.gov/txtfiles1/nij/195079.txt [^6]: National Institute of Justice, *Batterer Intervention Programs: Where Do We Go From Here?*, front matter (June 2003) — issuing officials, disclaimer of official position, and supporting grants 94-IJ-CX-0047 and 96-WT-NX-0008. https://www.ojp.gov/txtfiles1/nij/195079.txt [^7]: Office of Justice Programs, NCJRS Library, *Does Batterers' Treatment Work? A Meta-Analytic Review of Domestic Violence Treatment* (Babcock, Green and Robie, *Clinical Psychology Review* 23(8), January 2004), NCJ 306437 — 22 studies; Duluth model compared with CBT; effect sizes. https://www.ojp.gov/library/publications/does-batterers-treatment-work-meta-analytic-review-domestic-violence-treatment [^8]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition* (2017) — 1980 incorporation as Minnesota Program Development, Inc.; three founding staff; nine agencies; 1981 mandatory arrest policy and eight agencies; 1982 nine agencies. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^9]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *Definition of the Duluth Model* (June 2015), p. 1 — eleven agencies in the initial collaborative initiative. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Definition-of-Duluth-Model-June-2015.pdf [^10]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition*, 1993 entry (2017) — HHS funding of MPDI to form the Battered Women's Justice Project. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^11]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *What is The Duluth Model?* (web page, ©2025) — the agency's current description of a community using the model. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/what-is-the-duluth-model/ [^12]: National Institute of Justice, *Batterer Intervention Programs: Where Do We Go From Here?*, "Types of batterer intervention programs" and evaluation review (June 2003) — the NIJ description of the Duluth model; more than 35 published evaluations. https://www.ojp.gov/txtfiles1/nij/195079.txt [^13]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *The Development of the Power and Control and Equality Wheels* — 1982 creation of the wheel and its designers; 1984 Equality Wheel. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/The-Development-of-the-Power-and-Control.pdf [^14]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition*, 1983 entry (2017) — development of the Power and Control Wheel by women in the neighborhood groups. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^15]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition*, 1980 and 1982 entries (2017) — selection of Duluth as the pilot site; the Range Women Advocates adaptation; work found in every state. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^16]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition*, 1982–1987 entries (2017) — changes to mandated sessions; elimination of the "no drop" policy and conviction rates; return to subpoenaing victims. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^17]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition*, 1987–1989 entries (2017) — Kennedy School award; self-defense arrest policy; recidivism study; National Training Project. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^18]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition*, 1997–2003 entries (2017) — Minneapolis law enforcement curriculum; 1999 NIJ grant; 2003 curriculum rename. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^19]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition*, 2010 and 2014 entries (2017) — Domestic Violence Response Team partners; 2014 World's Best Policy recognition. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^20]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *Definition of the Duluth Model* (June 2015), p. 1 — origin in Duluth in 1980–81 and the organizers' choice of the city. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Definition-of-Duluth-Model-June-2015.pdf [^21]: National Institute of Justice, *Batterer Intervention Programs: Where Do We Go From Here?*, "The Broward Experiment" (June 2003) — study sites, sentencing conditions, and the five Duluth-model programs. https://www.ojp.gov/txtfiles1/nij/195079.txt [^22]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *Definition of the Duluth Model* (June 2015), pp. 2–3 — goals of intervention and the four strategic principles. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Definition-of-Duluth-Model-June-2015.pdf [^23]: National Institute of Justice, *Batterer Intervention Programs: Where Do We Go From Here?*, "About This Report" and introduction (June 2003) — why batterer intervention programs were introduced. https://www.ojp.gov/txtfiles1/nij/195079.txt [^24]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *The Development of the Power and Control and Equality Wheels* — the designers' statements on the wheel; translations and cultural contexts. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/The-Development-of-the-Power-and-Control.pdf [^25]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition*, 1990–2017 entries (2017) — named funders of agency projects, without amounts. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^26]: Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, *History and Recognition*, 1998 entry (2017) — national conference in Duluth with more than 500 attendees. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/DAIP-History-and-Recognition-2017.pdf [^27]: National Institute of Justice, *Batterer Intervention Programs: Where Do We Go From Here?*, "The Broward Experiment" (June 2003) — sample composition, rearrest rates and probation violations. https://www.ojp.gov/txtfiles1/nij/195079.txt [^28]: National Institute of Justice, *Batterer Intervention Programs: Where Do We Go From Here?*, "About This Report" and Brooklyn findings (June 2003) — results for the 8-week and 26-week groups. https://www.ojp.gov/txtfiles1/nij/195079.txt