Smart Probation: Innovations in Supervision Initiative (FY 2021)

 The Smart Probation: Innovations in Supervision Initiative (ISI) provides opportunities for community corrections agencies to improve supervision outcomes for individuals they supervise. The purpose of this program is to provide state, tribal, and local community corrections agencies with information, resources, and training and technical assistance (TTA) on ways to improve supervision capacity and partnerships with other justice agencies to prevent recidivism and reduce crime in their jurisdictions.

Objectives and Deliverables

Grantees of this program are supported to develop, implement, and/or test strategies to improve the capacity and effectiveness of probation and parole agencies to increase probation and parole success rates and reduce the rate of recidivism for those under supervision. Such efforts would reduce crime, victimization, and admissions to prisons and jails, and save taxpayer dollars.

Objectives

• Reduce recidivism and violent crime, in particular.
• Align community corrections agency practices with best and evidence-based practices to improve probationer/parolee outcomes on supervision:
  • Focus resources on individuals at high risk of recidivating and at higher risk of committing violence, including using normed and validated risk assessments to inform case management decisions.
  • Implement effective community supervision practices, including incorporating incentives and sanctions into the supervision process to encourage positive behavior changes.
  • Implement continuous quality improvement plans that measure outcomes and promote accountability. Develop, implement, and test innovative tools to predict violent recidivism and/or share information with criminal justice partners.
  • Promote and increase collaboration among agencies and officials who work in probation, parole, pretrial, law enforcement, treatment, reentry, and related community corrections field.

Deliverables

• Action plan, including a logic model where the objectives and activities are connected to the problem the applicant seeks to address.
• Final report

For more information, see the most recent BJA grant solicitation.