Why It's Needed
Supporting victims is essential, but prevention also requires addressing the behaviour of those who cause harm. Without structured intervention, cycles of domestic abuse often continue.
Communities and partner organisations have identified the need for culturally aware, trauma-informed behaviour change work that promotes accountability while prioritising victim safety.
Our Approach
The perpetrator harm-interruption programme: Inside Power: Change Starts Within is trauma-informed, culturally responsive and grounded in clear accountability. It is aimed at preventing reoffending and future victims for safer communities.
Participants are supported to recognise patterns of coercive control, emotional dysregulation, harmful beliefs and learned behaviours. The programme focuses on developing emotional regulation, responsibility-taking and safer relationship skills. Early sessions build responsibility-taking and safer relationship skills. Later sessions go deeper: examining the environment, family, and childhood experiences that shaped current behaviour, addressing the underlying factors beneath violence, and rebuilding a genuine sense of self-worth.
Participants leave with practical tools for emotional processing and tuning in to their own emotional state, mindful and instant calming techniques for moments of high stress, and a concrete plan for their future, relationships and role in their family and community.
This work does not excuse abuse. It challenges it directly while prioritising the safety and wellbeing of victims and families.
All delivery is undertaken in collaboration with safeguarding partners, with clear referral pathways to ensure victim safety remains paramount.
What the Programme Provides
Cultural awareness and contextual understanding
Exploration of belief systems and behaviour patterns
Tools for emotional regulation and stress management
Trauma recovery models to address underlying harm
Firm boundaries alongside compassionate facilitation
Insights from lived experience and reformed individuals
Clear accountability framework and behavioural contracts
Outcomes
The programme aims to reduce reoffending, increase accountability and improve emotional regulation among participants.
By addressing underlying risk factors and equipping participants with lasting tools for self-awareness and calm, we seek to interrupt cycles of domestic abuse, strengthen family safety and contribute to safer communities long after the programme ends.
Expansion
Following a successful pilot at HMP Liverpool, Inside Power is ready to expand its reach. The pilot recorded improvement across every outcome measured, providing promising early evidence that the programme can strengthen emotional awareness, self-regulation, personal responsibility and readiness for positive change.
The most significant improvements were in participants’ ability to pause before reacting, calm themselves before emotions take control, understand the sources and triggers of anger, and use practical strategies to respond differently.
Further delivery will enable these outcomes to be tested across additional prison settings, supported by longer-term follow-up and independent evaluation.
Pilot: HMP Liverpool
Inside Power was piloted at HMP Liverpool by trained facilitators working in partnership with prison safeguarding teams and within the prison’s existing offending behaviour framework.
The programme helps participants understand the emotions, experiences and beliefs that can contribute to harmful behaviour. It combines emotional awareness, practical self-regulation techniques, accountability and future-focused change planning to prevent reoffending and future victims, protecting partners and children to create a safer community.
Referral pathways and safeguarding oversight are maintained throughout delivery.
In line with data protection requirements, no personal or identifying participant information is shared. All published findings are anonymised and presented as aggregate data.
Overview of Results
Pre- and post-programme self-assessments showed positive movement across all ten measures evaluated.
- 25.4% improvement in the overall average score
- 58.1% improvement in the ability to pause and think before reacting
- 41.8% improvement in confidence that positive change is possible
- 38.2% improvement in the ability to calm emotions before losing control
- 36.1% improvement in the use of practical emotional regulation tools
- 34.2% improvement in understanding anger triggers
- The proportion of responses rated “Always” increased from 10.0% to 37.8%
- Responses rated “Rarely” or “Never” reduced by 56.7%
The results suggest stronger recognition of emotional escalation, greater understanding of triggers and increased confidence in choosing safer, more constructive responses.
These findings represent promising evidence of immediate, self-reported change. Further evaluation will examine whether improvements are sustained over time and contribute to longer-term behavioural outcomes.
Programme Principles
“Real strength is self-control.”
“Anger is an emotion. Abuse is a behaviour. We choose how we respond.”
“Change is consistent action, not good intentions.”