This is the 4th of a 7 part series on The Risk Principle Simplified.  Subscribe to our blog and get the series delivered right to your inbox.

What does "High Intensity" mean?

While the principle of matching risk level to treatment intensity level is almost universally accepted, an adequate definition of “intensity” is rarely given. The best definition is offered by Ed Latessa and Christopher Lowenkamp of the University of Cincinnati in their 2004 article titled, “Residential Community Corrections and the Risk Principle: Lessons Learned in Ohio”. The authors believe strongly in quality of treatment and have published several useful articles about its importance, but in this article they lay out a useful definition of intervention “intensity”.

• High intensity intervention equals residential placement and low intensity treatment equals non-residential treatment.  

Along with providing, in my opinion, the best definition of “intensity,” this article also provided greater evidence of the importance of matching risk level to intervention intensity.  A central finding in the study was: 

• When low risk offenders are placed in residential facilities, their rate of reoffending is higher than for low risk offenders who do not receive residential placement.

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Trust Is Like Air

I do not personally know most of you, but I’d like to take a stab at your latest marching orders from above.  Does it sound something like this? Implement EBP now!

Pretty simple right?  Use the NIC model (or stay tuned for the release of CorrectTech’s revised model soon) and implement the stated principles ASAP.  It can’t be that difficult, right?  Community Corrections has been talking about evidence based practices for decades now.  Time to walk the talk!  It will improve outcomes, public safety, communities and budgets.  It is a win-win-win.

Are We Losing Credibility?

If this has not been your marching order yet, it will be soon.  Day 1 will include googling something like “community corrections EBP implementation”.  You will find a variety of states and programs that speak eloquently about the value of EBP, but have not been able or willing to actually take the leap.  You will find other states that have demonstrated significant progress in the implementation journey.  Still other states or agencies have tried desperately for years, with sincere intentions and ample resources, only to be met with lack of results that meet up with the promise.  No wonder it is not uncommon to hear an old school criminal justice professional refer to EBP evangelism as “drinking The Kool Aid” or the “Latest Snake Oil”. 

This is the 7th of a 7 part series on The Risk Principle Simplified.  Subscribe to our blog and get the next series delivered right to your inbox.

Allowing High Risk Offenders to "Fail First"

While the danger of over-intervening with low risk offenders is generally acknowledged and respected, there is a trend toward policy makers ignoring the opposite side of the coin. For a variety of political and financial reasons, high risk offenders are receiving low intensity interventions under a “fail first model”. Instead of matching intensity of the intervention to the assessed risk level, high risk offenders are being provided low intensity interventions with the idea that when they fail, they will be provided a higher level of supervision. This policy has negative consequences for the following stakeholders: Victims, Offenders and The EBP Movement.

This is the 6th of a 7 part series on The Risk Principle Simplified.  Subscribe to our blog and get the series delivered right to your inbox.

What factors contribute to risk?

Just like the insurance industry, the risk model for offenders has very specific factors to consider. These models were developed in the exact same way that life insurance risk levels are determined. The life insurance industry looks at factors that correlate with early death. The criminal risk model looks at factors that correlate with future criminal behavior. Similarly, some of these factors can be changed (“dynamic risk factors” or “needs”) and others are static. Our next white paper, The Need Principle Simplified, will address “The Key 3” and how various offender situational and personal characteristics interact to increase or decrease criminogenic risk.

When High Risk is Too High: The Psychopath

Imagine what you would be capable of if you were completely self-interested and did not experience fear or guilt. While it is tough to even imagine,

This is the 5th of a 7 part series on The Risk Principle Simplified.  Subscribe to our blog and get the series delivered right to your inbox.

Why would it make them worse?

All interventions have side effects. As some unfortunate cancer patients will attest, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Therefore, it is vital to consider the pros and cons of all interventions. Some of the down sides of residential placement for low risk offenders are as follows:

• “The Social Learning Effect”:  Low risk offenders tend to learn high risk behaviors and attitudes from high risk offenders. In practice, I have observed that high risk offenders tend to be stronger leaders, positive or negative, in group therapy sessions and residential environments. The well-intended idea of using low risk offenders as role models for high risk offenders is not likely to help the high risk clients, AND is likely to make the “role model” higher risk.

• “The Ripple Effect”:  When you place a low risk offender in residential, it has a ripple effect in the rest of their life. You take away their support system (that has, relatively speaking, been prosocial) and replace that social influence with a group of high risk offenders. Similarly, placing an offender in