A new day is dawning for many in the community corrections field, as an emphasis on evidence-based practices is slowly, but surely, changing the way probation and parole departments do business.  With an eye on reducing recidivism, many agencies have begun to embrace evidence-based practices and the systemic changes that come with them.

While research regarding "what works" for improving offender outcomes has been around for nearly two decades, community corrections agencies have, in the last few years, really started to focus in on evidence-based practices, hoping that this new approach towards supervision will have a more meaningful impact on offenders.

With many departments discussing how to put this "what works" philosophy into motion, the National Institute of Corrections and other non-profit organizations have stepped up to assist agencies that want to integrate evidence-based practices into their departments' daily routines.

"We're trying to get beyond just talking about it," said Dot Faust, a Correctional Program Specialist at NIC at the American Probation and Parole Association's recent Winter Training Institute.

Faust currently heads up an NIC initiative to implement evidence-based practices in community corrections in two jurisdictions: Maine and Illinois.  Along with the Massachusetts-based Crime and Justice Institute (CJI), NIC provides support to community corrections departments in these states and helps them revamp their policies and procedures to mesh with the "what works" school of thought.

The NIC/CJI pilot project promotes the implementation of evidence-based practices through an integrated model, which consists of organizational development (internal strategies), collaboration (external) and eight evidence-based principles:

* Assess risk/needs
* Enhance intrinsic motivation
* Target interventions
* Skill train with directed practice
* Increase positive reinforcement
* Engage on-going support in communities
* Measure relevant practices
* Provide measurement feedback

By focusing equally on internal organizational development, external collaboration and the eight principles, both NIC and CJI believe community corrections agencies will become more effective and see better results with offenders.

"This is really about doing our work in a different way," said Lore Joplin, Deputy Director of CJI.

According to Joplin, in addition to the two pilot sites, NIC and CJI also chose two "learning sites," or jurisdictions that have already had some success in implementing evidence-based practices.  Iowa and Oregon, with years of experience under their belts, have been tapped to serve as resources for the pilot sites.

In 2004 with this assistance, both the Maine Department of Corrections, which oversees the state's adult community corrections department, and the Cook County, Ill., Adult Probation Department kicked off their evidence-based practices initiatives.  It's been a challenging road for the jurisdictions so far, but project directors in both sites are confident that their departments are moving in the right direction.

Maine

In Maine, a rural state with only 80 probation officers, 8,000 probationers and no parolees, the move towards evidence-based practices has begun.  At a meeting in early 2004, which included a number of stakeholders, like judges, community treatment providers and probation officers, the objectives were set for this overhaul of operations in the state's probation system.

"We came down to a consensus," said Lisa Nash, Project Coordinator for Maine Department of Corrections.  "We were going to reduce recidivism. "We basically need[ed] to do everything differently than what we [were] doing."

But in order to achieve that goal through NIC's and CJI's integrated approach, change was in order.

According to Nash, the first priority became staff training.  The department held a three-day meeting for all correctional administrators, whether they were working in the community or in facilities, she said. 

"We began to form a foundation [for] why we are doing this," Nash said.

Additionally, the administration sat down and talked openly about its performance, discussing both strong and weak points and areas for improvement.

"They began to understand some of the issues and weaknesses [probation officers] have," Nash said. 

NIC and CJI staff also administered to training probations officers at a conference at a Maine ski resort, Nash said.

"It's been really good," Nash said.  "We had a number of the staff come out and we introduced evidence-based practices."

The training piece of this initiative is important because the move towards evidence-based practices requires buy-in from officers and a change in the way they are used to doing their jobs.

"We're really focusing on [ongoing] training [for] people so we continue to give [them] the information they need and the tools they need [to do their jobs]," Nash said. 

According to Nash, staff had some concerns that they would be transformed from probation officers into social workers with this new emphasis on evidence-based practices and motivational interviewing, which is a technique used to enhance intrinsic motivation and obtain more information from offenders.

But, Nash maintains that in order to effectively do their jobs, probation officers need to play both a social work and law enforcement role.

"It's having multiple hats and being able to know when to wear them," she said.

Another step that has brought Maine closer to its ultimate goal of improving offender outcomes was the validation of the screening instrument probation officers use.

According to Nash, community corrections staff had fallen into the practice of administering the tool to assess only risks, not needs, and throwing the results into a file, never to be seen again.

"No one educated us as to why we shouldn't do it this way," Nash said.  "We were not doing it well at all."

Since the validation of the LSI, assessment has become a top priority in Maine, Nash said.

"We believe it's the cornerstone of anything else we are going to do," she said.

As the state department of probation strives to implement evidence-based practices, evaluation has become a chief concern, as well, Nash said.  With guidance from CJI, the department has begun to keep up-to-date statistics on offenders at all levels, she said.

"We're going to be able to see if what we are doing is working," Nash said.

But, Nash was careful to point out that the agency has to walk before it runs with the implementation of evidence-practices.

"If I look at the big picture for very long, I get overwhelmed," she said.
Despite the challenges, Nash is confident that Maine is making the right choice by moving to evidence-based practices.  And an important part of shifting in that direction is communicating the agency's vision to its staff and taking change one day at a time.

"[We] need to be clear about where we are going and not put too much on everybody's plate," Nash said.  "You're not going to do it all at once."

Illinois

In Cook County, Illinois, the Adult Probation Department also wanted to be deliberate in its implementation of evidence-based practices. With 750 staff members, 500 probation officers and nearly 32,000 offenders on probation, it made sense to take the project slowly by first employing the "what works" theory at one city site and one suburban site.

In such a large organization, making any kind of systemic change like this can be difficult, especially with union issues and the political climate, Veronica Ballard, Chief Probation Officer in Cook County said.

Ballard's staff was first introduced to evidence-based practices in October of 2003, when Dr. Edward Latessa, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who has been conducting research in this area for years, presented on the topic. 

"Every single staff member attended," Ballard said.  "One of the critical pieces for me is to make sure that we constantly bombard the staff with [information] about evidence-based practices [and why they are important]."

Since staff buy-in is critical to making the system shift, Cook County has tried hard to focus on organizational development, or internal strategy.

Part of this approach includes regular meetings of the 85 employees who are part of the pilot project, which include 62 probation officers, Ballard said.

"They're a part of helping to develop this initiative," she said. 

The second significant piece is external communication, which is also part of NIC's and CJI's integrated model for implementing evidence-based practices.

That's why the department is currently building strong relationships with community stakeholders by bringing them into the loop on the project.

Since the initiative began, the department has pulled together a team of 16 individuals from a variety of different organizations, including the court system, the police and sheriff's departments, the faith-based community, and the mayor's office.  That group, she said, meets once every two months to discuss issues associated with the project.

"Just about everything we do in probation is going to affect several of those departments," Ballard said.

While evidence-based practices are actually being implemented at the two pilot sites, the department has taken this opportunity to inform its entire staff about the initiative.

According to Ballard, at a training for all staff in September 2004, the two pilot sites engaged in a game show-like competition to educate staff even more about evidence-based practices.

In the near future, the department hopes to delve even deeper into this project by pulling together additional subcommittees to focus on different areas of the initiative, developing a set of core values for the organization and creating a before and after chart of how the agency supervises right now and how that supervision should look at the end of evidence-based practices.

"We're going to have to change a lot of our policies, principles and procedures so we're in synch with the way we supervise offenders," Ballard said.  "[But], it's obviously the way to go.

While both the Maine Department of Corrections and the Cook County Adult Probation Department gear up to see this project through to its completion, some organizations have already put evidence-based practices in place.

Multnomah County

Multnomah County, located in Oregon, which has been designated as a "learning site" for the NIC/CJI project, began the implementation process several years ago and the probation system has continued to reap the benefits.

The catalyst for change in Multnomah County in the 90s was a combination of budgetary issues and high caseloads for probation and parole agents. This caused county probation and parole officials to look deeper into the department's practices to see where it could be more effective and efficient.

They landed on the "what works" philosophy and evidence-based practices.

"That was going to be the framework for our changes [in the department]," said Don Trapp, What Works Program Supervisor for Multnomah County.

The principles that Multnomah County focused on included targeting of high and medium-risk offenders, having a reliable risk assessment to evaluate offenders' risk and needs, providing a climate for offender change and using effective practices for those at low-risk.

In addition, the department lowered caseloads to 79 per probation officer as part of these changes.

"Studies show that with the low risk, the more you drag them back into the system the worse they do," said Trapp.

With this in mind the department opened a day reporting center and a secure alcohol and drug treatment facility for low-risk offenders.

Trapp said these moves have shown both community corrections officials and lawmakers that the changes were worth the effort.

"We've had some twelve month periods where the recidivism of this [low-risk] group was zero. When you talk about 10,000 [offenders] and 2,500 in the low, limited group, that's a lot of folks not committing new crimes. It allows for our field POs to pay more attention to high and medium offenders," said Trapp.

Trapp said the change process required the participation of everyone in the system, from the top on down to the officers doing the work in the field.

"What works is trying to align our practices with those that are effective and making better use of our resources and changing the climate and culture of how we talked about cases and interacted with offenders," Trapp said.

Trapp said the old style of doing business would be following a court order to the "T" but now a supervising officer may look more broadly at an offender to ensure he receives the services that will help him succeed.

In order to make these changes, the department formed a What Works Steering Committee that, from the beginning, has talked about how change should be implemented. The committee included management, line staff, trainers, research staff and others.

"This was an organizational change from top to bottom. We weren't talking about a new form or a new process for one group of offenders. This was how we were going to do business. We were charged with creating the vision, including the vision and what does case management look like and the instrumentation look like [after the vision is implemented]," said Trapp.

The steering committee was critical to implementation because it was able to identify specific changes that needed to be made in training, supervision and case management.

Trapp said the committee identified about 20 different training elements that needed to be addressed in the training curricula as well as changes to case management, such as the inclusion of the motivational interview when assessing offenders.

In order to make massive organizational changes, Trapp said a department needs to have political support. Multnomah County was lucky in that its leader at the time was well connected and respected by lawmakers and therefore was able to obtain the freedom needed to implement change.

"If you can't get the political support, you can't move forward. You have to be free to innovate or know what your limitations are," said Trapp.

Trapp said another important element to change on this level is knowing how to utilize the skills and experience of the staff.

"The approach I took was saying [to staff] 'It is a lot of things you already know and do, but we are putting it altogether into a case management system,'" he said. "My pitch was always to relate it to what people already know."

This is all key to changing the way people do their jobs in the department, he added, which is why the department also linked the changes to employee performance.

"When we do a performance appraisal. The supervisors [now] look for different things and it matched the model shift. It stopped being 'this is a great idea' to 'this is how your work will be measured,'" Trapp said.  "It wasn't just a suggestion or a good idea, we changed the expectations for how parole and probation officers do their work."

This is also the goal of the NIC/CJI project -- to change the way community corrections agencies operate to, hopefully improve their effectiveness. 

And NIC and CJI are confident that, by using an integrated approach to implementing evidence-based practices, the desired outcome will be achieved.

"If we work these principles, we're much more likely to change behaviors and prevent recidivism," said Faust.

Resources:

Crime and Justice Institute: www.cjinstitute.org

National Institute of Corrections - www.nicic.org