The Duluth Model was conceived and implemented in a small working-class city in northern Minnesota in 1980-1981. The original Minnesota organizers were activists in the battered women's movement.

Duluth was selected as the best Minnesota city to try and bring criminal and civil justice agencies together to work in a coordinated way to respond to domestic abuse cases involving battering. Battering was defined as ongoing pattern of abuse used by an offender against a current or former intimate partner.

Eleven agencies formed the initial collaborative initative. These included 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 a newly created coordinating organization called the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP).

Since then, DAIP's activist, reform oriented origins have shaped its development and popularity among reformers in other communities. And today, the Duluth Model has evolved as the most replicated woman abuse intervention model in the country.

Learn more about the history of domestic abuse intervention