Alameda County Smart Supervision Initiative

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 Alameda County Probation Department (ACPD) will utilize funds towards the Smart Supervision Initiative. ACPD's goal is to improve supervision strategies by implementing a comprehensive, evidence-based supervision model with a number of approaches that include: a validated risk assessment and a needs assessment that will allow them to better identify, supervise and treat high-risk/high-needs supervisees. By validating the current risk assessment tool, implementing the NOBLE needs assessment platform, and evaluating the impact of the use of these evidence-based supervision strategies, ACPD will improve probation success rates, improve public safety, reduce admissions to prisons and jails, and save taxpayer dollars.
CA/NCF