Thursday 13 January 2011

County Probation Department considers program that would reduce recidivism by felons

The tendency of ex-felons to lapse into criminality can be effectively reduced if a set of principles is aggressively applied, officials said this week. 
Numerous law enforcement and county probation department officials watched a lengthy PowerPoint presentation where a technical consultant, Sean Hosman, lectured them about the merits of applying the eight principles of what was termed evidence-based practice, in an effort to reduce recidivism among adult felons on probation.
Among those principles include ways of accessing the risks or needs of offenders, to finding ways of relating to offenders in order to motivate a change in their behavior and increasing positive reinforcement.
While the evidence-based practice assessment was initially developed in 2002, all 58 counties in California are trying to apply the principles, said Imperial County Probation Chief Martin Krizay.
The county probation department intends to implement the program during the next five years based on research that is supposed to demonstrate “what works to change offender behavior,” Krizay said in a statement.
No one knows what Imperial County’s recidivism rate is, Hosman said. Krizay said after the presentation that while the state has been slow to adopt the principles discussed, he intends to have his staff trained and to change the department’s mission statement and core values.
“We want to be driven by data and we’re learning how to do that,” Krizay said

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