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.

Having the Right Ingredients

Baking soda or baking powder? Make sure you check your recipe card before you go dumping in the wrong one. My husband was so kind to make me his first batch of chocolate chip cookies one evening… while I was pregnant and it was urgent that I had some. Let’s just say, he used the wrong one and even though they didn’t taste quite right, I still ate several. What does this have to do with community based corrections you ask?

It’s also important to have all of your key ingredients when completing a case plan with your client. Almost universally in the community based corrections world, there is a risk assessment used to help case managers assess the top criminogenic (crime creating) needs. Setting goals in your case plan to address these high-risk areas increases the chance of reducing this risk. Criminogenic needs and goals are usually required ingredients in a case plan.

Subscribe to our blog and get the blog posts delivered right to your inbox.

Managing with "PEOPLE"

“Life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you are going to get.”  While it would be a stretch to consider Forrest Gump a management consultant, I have discovered this bit of wisdom applies to offender and employee management.

I’ve found that because both staff and clients have the whole “being a human” thing in common, the relationship style, strategy and techniques that are helpful with offender management are also effective with staff management.   Of course, we have to adjust our management style to connect and manage different types of personalities. I’ve found that using the PEOPLE method has helped me in my management efforts:

• Personable

• Empathetic

• Objective

• Professional

• Lead

• Example 

Subscribe to our blog and get all of our blog posts delivered right to your inbox.

A Shift in Thinking in Community Corrections

I turned 54 when I started writing this post.  So... I’m “old” (at least that is what my four kids tell me).  Another birthday simply means I have personally experienced many shifts in business and information technology in the past half century including but not limited to the following: 

• Mainframes taking whole floors of buildings to networked devices that practically disappear into our surroundings

• Transaction systems in isolated silos to enterprise database systems that allow rapid integration and collaboration

• Large scale custom software projects to highly configurable "off the shelf" software products 

• Simple single function web sites to comprehensive Enterprise web portals

• Cloud technologies such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) 

So what does my technology and software experience have to do with today’s community corrections business?

The Tender Topic of Relapse in Community Corrections

While doing Motivational Interviewing training with community corrections staff, we began discussing the stages of change and specifically the topic of relapse. The stage of relapse brought up an interesting discussion with the group about which clients should get second chances.  

John: “I can see giving the direct sentence clients a second chance but I don’t think the clients coming from prison should get any chances, if they relapse, they are gone.  They should be grateful they even got a chance to get out of prison.”

Lisa: “What do other people think about that?”

Susie: “I think that this is a treatment program and we need to provide the client with treatment, terminating them isn’t going to do anything.”

Josie: “It depends on the client, does he want help?”

Jim: “A lot of times these clients who relapse act like they want help around admin and case management staff but we hear what they really say.  They know they can get away with using and just ask for help.”

The conversation went back and forth with valid points in each direction.