Enhancing Fidelity to Evidence-Based Models

The Second Chance Act signed into law on April 9, 2008, 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. As a complement to the Second Chance Act programs, the FY 2014 Smart Supervision Program (SSP) seeks to improve probation and parole success rates, which would in turn improve public safety, reduce admissions to prisons and jails, and save taxpayer dollars. The goal of this program is to develop and test innovative strategies to implement evidence-based probation and parole approaches that increase community safety, and reduce violent crime by effectively addressing individuals risk and needs, and reducing recidivism.

The recipient will use funds to support implementation of the Maine Integrated Risk Reduction Model (MIRRM), designed to improve supervision by providing probation officers a toolkit to use in case planning and assessment. The goals are to: (1) enhance supervision effectiveness; (2) monitor implementation and execution of the program model; and (3) evaluate the effectiveness of the fidelity project in relation to probation officer/probationer interaction and reduced recidivism. The target population includes a goal of 5,000 adult probationers.

CA/NCF