Second Chance Act Demonstration Field Experiment: Fostering Desistance through Effective Supervision.

The Second Chance Act of 2007 provides a comprehensive response to the increasing number of people who are released from prison and jail and returning to communities, including resources to address the myriad needs of these offenders to achieve a successful return to their communities. Under the Second Chance Act of 2007 (Public Law 110-199, Sec 245), the Demonstration Field Experiment (DFE): Fostering Desistance through Effective Supervision Program provides funding to states, units of local government, territories, and federally recognized Indian tribes (as determined by the Secretary of the Interior) in an effort to enhance public safety and to improve the outcomes of parolees by implementing and rigorously testing an innovative reentry model in up to four jurisdictions across the United States.

In order to generate new knowledge about effective solutions for working with offenders in the community and to enhance practice-the DFE will focus on examining the community-based components of a comprehensive reentry strategy. The DFE will also examine how post-release interactions, programs, services, and activities impact parolees. While DFE sites must have a comprehensive pre- and post-release reentry initiative already established, the results from this DFE are expected to enhance the knowledge base for working with post-release offenders in the community.

The DFE model presents a crime desistance based framework to improve the cognitive and behavioral capabilities of offenders during the period of parole. Each component of the desistance model serves to integrate parole/supervised release and community-based services in a collaborative framework that works in tandem to address criminogenic needs.

The goals are to: improve the offenders motivation to change; address cognitive and behavioral functioning regarding crime-prone thoughts and behaviors; and address core criminogenic needs that affect offender performance while on parole. The model also works on building the infrastructure of the reentry process and community-based services to deliver collaborative and seamless services. The collaborative intervention is designated for offenders that are moderate to high risk offenders, based on the results of a validated risk assessment instrument.

The Colorado Department of Corrections re-entry initiative, pre and post, has fostered collaboration with stakeholders and providers. It has widened its circle of collaboration by partnering in the multi-agency Evidence-Based Practices Implementation for Capacity (EPIC) project, which has developed strong, shared ties with probation, community corrections, parole, prison facilities and behavioral health; it has trained/coached a pilot group of officers in Motivational Interviewing to proficiency and is in the nascent stages of implementing cognitive programs. Reliance on MET, T4C, ICMS and desistance theory is a natural progression for APCC. Re-entry partnerships include labor and employment, faith-based and federal organizations, local community teams and service providers, all in step with the DFEs collaborative context. APCC has successfully implemented the Colorado Web-Based Integrated Support Environment (CWISE) which offers single source electronic data collection and tracking.
NCA/NCF