Perpetrator Programmes in Penal‐Welfare Governance: Variation in Programme Intake Across Italy

ABSTRACT Perpetrator programmes are an established component of institutional responses to violence against women. Drawing on the Italian case, this article examines how organisational and institutional configurations are associated with variation in programme intake. Using a national dataset of 94 identified programmes, we estimate two regression tree models, distinguishing between overall and criminal-justice-mediated intake. The fitted trees identify conditional in-sample patterns but show negligible cross-validated predictive performance. Overall intake is differentiated mainly by the number of access points and, among programmes with fewer access points, by financial resources. Criminal-justice-mediated intake is differentiated first by provincial population size and subsequently, depending on context, by funding, formal network representation, bilateral institutional ties and motivation-based admission rules. Programme intake is conceptualised as an institutional outcome associated with context-specific combinations of organisational resources and local integration. These exploratory patterns suggest that efforts to expand programme access should consider both available resources and reported institutional relationships within local violence response systems.