Stopping Violence

In an article entitled, Rethinking Stopping Violence Programmes, Stuart Birks, the director for Public Policy Evaluation at Massey University, says this:

One of the most puzzling aspects to me is that we allow interference in our lives to an extreme degree, up to and including the routine destruction of relationships between parents and their children. This is permitted despite the open admission that the theories are questionable, the data are problematic, and the effectiveness of the interventions is unknown. The people proposing and implementing these policies are subject to limited accountability and may not have the training, skills, experience, awareness and impartiality to justify our confidence in them.

Most of Stuart's article is about male/female violence and the ways our society is dealing with it, such as recent ideas that different races should be treated differently. He expresses a number of concerns, looks at readings of data that may be false, and wonders whether we're really making any inroads into treating violence - and whether there are other agendas at work complicating Government policy on the matter.