It Costs More to Do Nothing: Preventing Male Perpetration of Domestic Violence

This briefing paper expands the domestic-violence costing argument by examining the economic consequences of failing to intervene earlier in the trajectories of 934 male perpetrators charged in Calgary in 2019. It brings together police costs, court costs, and conservative estimates of victim-related costs to show that the existing crisis-response model is expensive even before the broader harms of trauma, lost productivity, and intergenerational effects are fully counted. The authors stress that these costs accumulate through repeated and escalating patterns of violence rather than isolated one-off incidents.

The paper argues that early intervention with men at risk of perpetrating violence is more effective and more economical than waiting until after harm has escalated. It frames prevention programs and behaviour-change efforts as a way to reduce demand on emergency systems, improve accountability, and lower long-run public costs. The central message is straightforward: continuing to spend mainly on reactive policing and justice responses is both morally weaker and financially less efficient than investing earlier in prevention.