The Need for Containment

A recent spate of domestic violence homicides in Maine and Massachusetts has led for the call for greater "containment" of abusers.  Since June 2011 there have been over a dozen domestic violence related killings in New England which brings up the issue of how to contain abusers and keep them from killing their families.  Police and social service agencies encounter cases of domestic violence on a daily basis.  The difficulty they experience is how to differentiate the cases of intimate partner aggression from those who go on to murder their spouses and often themselves.