Development, Testing, and Evaluation of the Use of Polygraphs to Combat Violence Against Women

De Kalb County Georgia Probation Department is developing an innovative program to test the application of polygraph technology to supervise, contain and treat high risk misdemeanor abusers who are in the community. This 24 month experiment will have three parts: Phase I will initiate the implementation of the program and the random assignment of batterers to experimental (polygraph) and control (no polygraph) groups, and pre-test the operation of the program with a small number of polygraph tests with appropriate probationary follow-up. Phase II (operations) will last until the 18th month. It is expected that 240 high risk offenders (120 treatment and 120 controls) will be identified by DeKalb Probation, assigned to the cooperating batterer treatment program (Riveros Counseling Services), and their victims interviewed by the Victim Liaison employed by Riveros, Court procedures applied to both groups will remain unchanged to avoid confounding the outcomes. Measures of post-conviction criminal behavior will include interview data from victims and criminal record data. Phase III (Analysis) will involve analysis of process and outcome data, using cross-tabulations, survival analysis, and logistic regression.

ca/ncf