Consistency in Responsivity Project

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 fiscal year (FY) 2016 Smart Supervision Program (SSP) seeks to improve probation and parole success rates and reduce the number of crimes committed by those under probation and parole supervision, which would in turn reduce admissions to prisons and jails and save taxpayer dollars. Funds can be used either to implement evidence-based supervision strategies or to innovate new strategies to improve outcomes for supervisees. 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 recipient will use award funds administer the Consistency in Responsivity Project. This project seeks to apply evidence based practices (EBP) when responding to probationer success or problematic behavior through the development and testing a computerized administrative response matrix (ARM) that will guide probation officers in selecting specific incentives and sanctions to utilize when responding to significant supervision events. The matrix provides an operational method for probation officers to use that ensures upholding the EBP principles of swiftness, certainty, consistency, neutrality, and proportionality when addressing violation behaviors of offenders or incentives for prosocial behaviors. The goals of the project are to: 1) reduce probation/parole revocations for technical violations; and 2) reduce the use of jail/prison beds for technical violation revocations. The project will impact a target population of approximately 10,000 medium to high risk probationers/ parolees by implementing ARM in seven probation districts that are representative of the geographic and demographic state profile.

CA/NCF