Data Matters in Community Corrections! 

The second decade of this young millennium is proving to be a major turning point for community corrections agencies and practitioners.

Software is changing the way we practice community corrections and we are making progress daily in our efforts to make our data systems more functional, practically and clinically. (See Is Software the Key to EBP –Part I to see how.)

Practically, it is now possible to have a fully paperless and EBP-influenced information system that has the ability to integrate facility security functions with overall case management, treatment, programming, accountability, supervision, and outcome measures.

Clinically, treatment providers and researchers are working together in unique ways to actually implement EBP rather than just talk about it.

Technologically, advances in software performance and flexibility have resulted in the ability to quickly integrate new practical and clinical innovations into community corrections information systems.

The EBP and “what works” movements were born out of data at a time when few community corrections programs had sophisticated information systems. The research data gathering was painstaking and resulted in limited visibility. For EBP to fulfill its promise to impact the lives of both the practitioner and the client, it is time for integrated and intelligent systems to provide the next generation of “EBP Data” that comes to us daily, weekly and monthly from our own IT systems.

The Frightening “Can You Get Me That Information Real Quick” Request

Have you ever felt like someone kicked the wind out of you with a request for information? You were starting to feel some momentum on your daily routines and then, BAM, someone creates a windstorm with what they think is a simple request. That’s how I felt as a case manager AND administrator before we had CorrectTech’s case management software system that made these interruptions of my daily routine easy to respond to quickly so I could get back to my work with our clients.

I’ve written about the unsung hero’s hectic job before and the frequent interruptions are just one area that contributes to our challenges. Organization and easy tracking are crucial to keeping our duties manageable. No matter what job we have or task we are working to accomplish in a community corrections agency, someone is going to interrupt our flow. Don’t worry; our needs have not been ignored.

Problem Solved!

Community Corrections Manager is a Hard Job

You are responsible for the things you do, don’t do and should do. You are also responsible for the results and decisions of your team. You have to answer to a variety of stakeholders. After all the meetings are done and requests for information are made, it is hard to find time to connect with your staff or focus on results. If you had a clone of yourself to sit in on all those meetings, you could save a lot of time. I can’t offer you that, but I can show you the next best thing out there.

CorrectTech community corrections software offers managers all the information they need at their fingertips. Among the many benefits for the manager, every part of the client file is accessible and the results are all stored in our data management system.

Check out our newest animated video “Manage People, Not Data” for some specific highlights.
This is part 2 in a 3 part series on our powerful data management system – make sure you watch them all!

As the father of two teenage girls, any article about parenting tends to catch my attention. I found an article Parenting Style and Its Correlates by Nancy Darling particularly interesting both as a parent and as an administrator for a community corrections facility. While there is not much new information in this article about which parenting style typically results in well-adjusted children, it is a great summary. What was new for me in reading this article is the parallel that I see in working with offenders.

A Couple Key Definitions

Parenting: It is assumed that the primary role of all parents is to influence, teach, and control their children. A parenting style is the overall pattern of the extent and focus of control.

Psychological control: "You should adapt my values, goals, and judgments."

Behavioral control: "You are expected to play by the rules of this family."

Parental responsiveness refers to "the extent to which parents intentionally foster individuality, self-regulation, and self-assertion by being attuned, supportive, and acquiescent to children's special needs and demands."[i] I refer to this characteristic in the table below as “fosters psychological independence.”

Parental demandingness refers to "the claims parents make on children to become integrated into the family whole, by their maturity demands, supervision, disciplinary efforts and willingness to confront the child who disobeys."[ii] I refer to this characteristic in the table below as “demands behavioral compliance.”

Can you start to see the parallel between parenting and our work in supervising offenders?

Who wins games, defense or offense? If it is defense, why does the coach get fired after too many games with too few points? If it is offense, why do players lose their positions if they can’t do their jobs defensively? I can tell you what ESPN talking heads might say… but let’s face it, every member is crucial in the team’s success.

Departments in community corrections also need to be able to operate as a team and share information. I’ve compared our residential community corrections team at Time to Change to a football team in trainings. You have your defense (security), your offense (case managers) and your coaches (management). You need all parts of the team to get to the end goal of successful client reintegration.

The Previously Tedious Incident Report

Take incident reports (IRs) for example. Accountability and structure is a big part of creating change. We all have rules to follow and we do better when we know the consequences, good or bad, of our behavior. Before we had a fully integrated case management software system, our IR tracking system at Time to Change was… just awful.