A couple of decades ago, people who watched domestic-violence cases fill up family court dockets day in and out came up with the idea of sending men who brutalize women to classes that might undo their violent tendencies.

It sounded like a really cool idea.

Rather than hide or shelter women from their abusers – I mean, how many of these women and their children can we realistically hide – why not change the men?

Most violent behavior is learned, after all. Which means, the thinking goes, that it also can be unlearned and that healthier ways of dealing with anger and stress can be taught.

It was a powerful idea that caught on, so much so that by far the lion’s share of batterers convicted in domestic-violence cases in California today are court-ordered to intervention programs allowing them to attend 52 weekly sessions in lieu of jail time.

Given that, one assumes this treatment works and that the courts are tough about making sure the offenders actually attend these programs, right?

Not quite.

The truth is, no one has measured their effectiveness, and the dropout rate for men who enroll is about 50 percent – and that doesn’t even count the abusers who never sign up, according to testimony given at the state Capitol on Wednesday.

Such realities are “very, very troubling,” said Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn, D-Saratoga, who called the informational hearing before the state Assembly’s Select Committee on Domestic Violence, which she chairs.

Cohn recently spent half a day observing Santa Clara County’s Domestic Violence Court, where she said every convicted batterer, 23 or 24 in all, went directly past jail and was diverted to intervention programs, prompting a simple question: Do these work?

Looking for statistics or research, she found very little. There is no strong evidence they do work, one expert after another told the committee. (Reformed batterers who had completed such programs successfully were, sadly, absent from the hearing.)

In fact, the science and research behind these programs is so fuzzy, they said, advocates in the field of domestic violence strongly believe that, while they surely help some abusers and couples, they raise the risk of danger for many other victims.

One of the reasons no one monitors these programs is because the criminal justice system that diverts abusers to them has no resources or technology in place to enforce or track their attendance. The system is overwhelmed. In Cohn’s county alone, 200 new domestic violence cases pass through the courts every week, she said.

In Los Angeles County, inmates serving one-year sentences are being released after 23 days because the county doesn’t have the money to hold them, testified Debra Andrew, a Superior Court judge in Long Beach.

Offenders who never enroll often slip through the cracks until they’re pulled in on another violation and are “generally well aware of the shortcomings of the system,” said Paul Seave, director of the Attorney General’s Crime and Violence Prevention Center where a task force is studying this issue. Those who do show pay for the classes, but that money goes to the operations that run them, which are all over the map in approach and curriculum. Some are like group therapy; others have the feel and tenor of college courses in gender studies. Almost anyone can run one.

“What kind of background or degree do you need (to run a program)?” said Linda Shelton, vice president of the Chief Probation Officers Association. “Under the penal code, zero.”

Questions abound, which is what Wednesday’s hearing was about, laying out a framework of inquiry.

Are these programs reducing family violence and is anyone measuring that? Who holds the batterer accountable? Do these programs put victims at risk by giving them a false sense of security? Why do people convicted of other violent crimes get jail and these batterers get programs? No one knows.

“Everyone assumes that everything’s working fine,” Seave said. “It isn’t.”