There was once a Community Corrections agency that took great pride in the way its staff, particularly managers, were able

I have been training on a wide variety (e.g., CMC; YLS-CMI; PACT; COMPAS; LSI-R; PCL; SDRRC; ROPE; LS-CMI, ASUS, ASUDS) of offender assessment tools for over 32 years. Over time, I have begun to wonder precisely what competencies make an officer particularly good at sizing someone up with an interview-style assessment.

Have you ever struggled with the dilemma of encouraging high-risk clients to determine what is best for them, versus using

Prior to ‘What Works’ and soon afterwards EBPs there were few definitive signals about what direction a community corrections organization

Thanks to the ground-breaking work of researchers like Ted Palmer, Paul Gendreau, Don Andrews and Jim Bonta, the field of

Since Dowden & Andrews’ 2004 meta-analysis on effective staff practices, the corrections field has been on notice that staff approaches that are fair, firm and transparent get better outcome results.

As staff develop their individual expertise with new skills, and also expertise on what works and doesn’t work for skill development, they become a rich source for ideas around creating engaging ways for supporting, mastering and integrating EBP’s into practice

In this edition, we take the next step into Communities of Practice – the first “tool for implementation” that engages the power of group learning rather than simple individual feedback.

In this edition, we take the next step into decision support databases, which use the accumulated performance assessment data to discern when individuals achieve competency or partial competency and overall training goals have been met, especially when sustainability is of significant interest.

Performance Assessment, aka “How are we doing with these skills, anyway?”