The issues examined are the role court mandating plays in facilitating treatment, the most effective treatments for wife assaulters, and research on treatment outcome with wife assaulters. Several treatment authorities have called for greater reliance on the courts to require treatment following arrest for wife assault. Reasons vary but have a common theme of holding the assailant accountable to acknowledge and change his violent behavior. Also, the offender often has a continuing relationship with the victim, thus requiring a different criminal justice disposition from that used for a stranger assault. Following a review of types of court mandates, this paper provides an overview of research on compliance with court-mandated treatment of wife abusers. Issues and controversies associated with various treatment approaches are discussed, followed by an examination of most of the major research studies and presentations that have evaluated treatment outcome for domestic violence perpetrators. In the latter case, 28 studies, reviews, and surveys from 1984 to 1990 are summarized. Methodological problems with outcome research are also summarized. The study concludes that the treatment programs and the evaluative research associated with them have produced few unequivocal conclusions. Rather than providing firm conclusions about the effectiveness of various methods used in court-mandated treatment of spouse abusers, this study should help in the development and implementation of improved individual research studies in the future. 71 references