Why It's Needed
Supporting victims is essential, but lasting prevention also requires addressing the behaviour of those who cause harm. Without effective intervention, patterns of domestic abuse can continue, placing victims, children and communities at further risk.
In the year ending March 2025, an estimated 3.8 million adults experienced domestic abuse in England and Wales. 43.8% of adults released from custody reoffend within a year, rising to 76% among those who are homeless or sleeping rough on release.
Leaving prison without stable accommodation, recovery support or positive opportunities can make lasting change extremely difficult. In 2023/24, more than one in four prison leavers were still without settled accommodation three months after release, while almost 50,000 adults received drug or alcohol treatment in secure settings.
Inside Power combines trauma-informed behaviour change work with practical pathways into accommodation, employment and recovery support. By addressing harmful behaviour alongside the pressures that can drive reoffending, the programme promotes accountability, protects future victims and supports safer reintegration into the community.
Our Approach
Inside Power: Change Starts Within is a trauma-informed, culturally responsive perpetrator harm-interruption programme designed to prevent reoffending, reduce future harm and protect potential victims.
Grounded in clear accountability, the programme works with people who have used violence or abuse to understand and interrupt the patterns that contribute to harmful behaviour. Participants explore coercive control, emotional dysregulation, harmful beliefs, learned behaviours and the choices that can lead to violence or abuse.
The focus is not simply on understanding past behaviour, but on changing future behaviour. Participants develop emotional regulation, responsibility-taking, self-worth, healthier relationship skills and practical strategies to recognise escalation, pause before reacting and make safer choices. Participants examine the deeper factors that may have shaped their behaviour, including family dynamics, childhood experiences, trauma, environment and learned responses. These experiences may help explain how harmful patterns developed, but they do not excuse abuse. Instead, this understanding is used to strengthen accountability and create lasting change.
Participants leave with practical tools for processing difficult emotions, techniques to pause and regulate themselves during moments of heightened stress, and a concrete plan for their future, relationships and role within their family and community.
The ultimate aim is prevention: fewer repeat offences, fewer people subjected to violence and abuse, and safer families and communities.
Victim safety remains central throughout. All delivery is undertaken alongside safeguarding partners, with clear referral pathways and appropriate support to ensure the safety and wellbeing of victims and families remains paramount.
What the Programme Provides
Cultural awareness and contextual understanding
Exploration of belief systems and behaviour patterns
Trauma recovery models to address underlying harm
Understanding the childhood, family and environmental factors beneath violence
Rebuilding self-worth and identity beyond harmful behaviour
Emotional processing and tuning-in techniques
Mindful and instant calming techniques for high-stress moments
Tools for emotional regulation and stress management
Future planning: goals, relationships and life beyond the programme
Firm boundaries alongside compassionate facilitation
Insights from lived experience and reformed individuals
Clear accountability framework and behavioural contracts
Outcomes
Inside Power aims to reduce reoffending and future harm by strengthening accountability, emotional regulation and participants’ ability to recognise and interrupt harmful patterns.
Early evaluation found improvements across every measure assessed, including a 58.1% increase in pausing before reacting, a 38.2% improvement in calming emotions before losing control and a 41.8% increase in belief that positive change is possible.
By addressing underlying risk factors and building practical skills for safer choices and healthier relationships, the programme seeks to create sustained change, strengthen family safety and build safer communities.
Every offence prevented is a victim protected.
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.
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 Quotes
Programme Quotes
“I refuse to repeat the same mistakes.”
“I am ready to make a change.”
“I refuse to go back to a life of crime.”