More men are in prison on domestic violence offences. What can be done to prevent them reoffending?

‘They’re people I want to keep in my life,’ says Josh of the men he’s met at Rainbow Lodge who have become like family. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

Josh* says he’s not a violent man, but he has done violent things. It was only after a quarter of his life spent in and out of prison that he came to see the violence didn’t happen in a vacuum.

“I had a pretty crap upbringing,” he says, sitting in the courtyard of a nondescript home on a quiet street in inner Sydney. The 42-year-old Gamilaroi man is warm and a fast talker.