NC ASSIST: Aligning Supervision Strategies for Individuals in need of Services and Treatment

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 2015 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 goals of this program are to develop and test innovative strategies to implement evidence-based probation and parole approaches that improve supervision success rates, thereby increasing community safety, and reduce violent and other crime by effectively addressing individuals’ risk and needs and reducing recidivism.

The grantee will utilize award funds to target high-risk offenders with severe mental illness (MI). The grantee will integrate the following smart supervision strategies, serving more than 480 offenders within 12 specialty mental health caseloads (SMHC): (1) alignment of service plans with the Department’s risk and needs assessment (“RNA”) results; (2) training officers to use smart supervision strategies; (3) using graduated incentives and sanctions; (4) engaging SMHC officers in performance-driven personnel practices (i.e., skill-based training, motivational interviewing with audiotaping, supervision and feedback, and coaching); (5) training officers in dual diagnosis motivational interviewing, which is an innovative, evidence-based adaptation to motivational interviewing that focuses on developing internal motivation through a client-centered approach to problem solving; and (6) expanding SMHC’s intervention capacity through community- capacity building, cross-system training, and information sharing.

CA/NCF