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About EBP in Community Corrections

Evidenced-Based Practices (EBP) is the progressive organizational use of direct, scientific, current evidence to guide efficient, cost-effective correctional services that positively impact subsequent recidivism / victimization and/or public satisfaction.

In response to the belief popular in the ‘70s and ‘80s that “nothing works” in reducing crime rates, researchers in the ‘90’s increasingly focused on discovering which line officer and administrator approaches, case planning procedures, treatment strategies, and quality assurance measures did consistently reduce recidivism. Findings revealed that supervision strategies that emphasize treatment, particularly cognitive-behavioral interventions targeted to higher risk offenders, reliably reduce recidivism. Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment (CBT) interventions have proven to be effective with a wide variety of offender and general populations. These interventions include:
  • Cognitive skill-building curriculum-driven courses;
  • Motivational Interviewing or enhancement;
  • Relapse prevention training;
  • Family-based home interventions like Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST) and Family Functional Therapy (FFT);
  • Contingency management strategies that emphasize positive rewards.
J-SAT’s EBP Strategy

Through many state implementations of various offender assessment tools, J-SAT combined these treatment principles with other findings regarding offender assessment and ongoing quality assurance into a comprehensive strategy broken down into 8 steps. This combination ensures that EBP:
  1. Relies upon statistically-sound
    risk / needs assessment to
    match offenders to the
    appropriate level
    of supervision and treatment);
  2. Encourages collaborative officer-offender discussions using Motivational Interviewing
    to identify and enhance intrinsic offender motivation to make positive changes;
  3. Assigns offenders to specific treatment based on their “riskiest” pro-criminal factors;
  4. Ensures that assigned treatment includes direct practice
    in thinking and behavioral skills that have been shown
    to reduce recidivism significantly;
  5. Mandates that those interacting with offenders use
    positive reinforcement in response to offenders’
    pro-social behavior change milestones;
  1. Provides healthy community support structures and contacts for offenders that can persist after offenders have terminated out of probation or other sanctions;
  2. Requires ongoing measurement of system components that must maintain quality to maintain positive effects on offender outcomes; and
  3. Ensures ongoing feedback on all these components to help an organization evolve in its proficiency for successfully implementing EBP.
While adopting any one of these principles can produce some positive recidivism reductions, system-wide adoption of the entire EBP strategy is necessary for obtaining results consistent with research. J-SAT is renowned for helping correctional organizations successfully implement an EBP approach through:
  • Assessing how an organization’s current practice compares to EBP;
  • Helping staff to understand the impacts of EBP on the organization;
  • Developing a customized implementation plan;
  • Providing training on EBP fundamentals, EBP for Community Corrections, and Training for Trainers; and
  • Providing EBP research reviews, performance measurements, assessments, and database tutorials.
Even when not conducting a full system implementation of EBP, J-SAT uses the EBP principles of research data analysis in developing all of our tools and services. Our continually-updated database system includes the analysis of data in the areas of Motivational Interviewing skills, group process, offender risk assessment, and officer/offender interaction critiques.

EBP Workshop Structure

During this 3-day workshop, expert J-SAT trainers and researchers guide participants through the following modules:

  1. Understanding the Big Picture

    The Evidence-Based Practice model is presented, along with its two sister components: Organizational Development and Collaboration among justice system community stakeholders. This background helps participants to see that EBP is not another “flavor-of-the-month” project. Organizations seeking impressive recidivism reductions will have to commit to it long-term.

  2. Evaluating Current Sanctioning Philosophies

    Participants are asked to evaluate their organization’s readiness for change by weighing in with their collective beliefs and values on a number of justice system sanctioning philosophies.

  3. The Research: What Works and Doesn’t Work in Reducing Recidivism

    Participants are presented with recidivism research demonstrating the difference in success rates between advocacy or custodial methods and EBP.

  4. Experiential Walk-Through of EBP’s Eight Guiding Principles

    The bulk of workshop activity is devoted to giving participants a working knowledge of key EBP concepts and principles, their use in community corrections, and the resulting implications for organizational change. Participants receive conceptual and pragmatic coaching in the foundational EBP skill-sets and strategies that help officers to collaborate with offenders to effect pro-social change. At the conclusion of the workshop, most participants are eager to move toward full implementation of EBP, realizing that this model is long overdue.
View Detailed Workshop Outline

After the training, J-SAT will analyze and graph the organizational data collected during the sessions and present it to agency management in a report.


 Who Should Attend?
  1. Front line community corrections service professionals responsible for working through problem behaviors with clients and/or conducting client assessments, and

  2. Supervisors, managers, and QA staff who will supervise front line staff’s application of EBP skills.
If managers are unable to commit to a 3-day event, J-SAT can provide a 1-day overview compressed into a balanced amount of didactic presentation and experiential how-to.

Setting Up a Training

Once you Contact Us to discuss the specifics of the training and set dates, our training coordinator will walk you through the entire process, making sure that you have all the information you need to provide for a smooth, effective training experience. The following information may be helpful as you decide how to proceed:

Training Location: Participant / Trainer Ratio:
  • Due to the number of skills rehearsals with individual feedback, J-SAT recommends one facilitator for every 20 participants.

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