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 your Risk-Need-Responsivity knowledge and tools to determine that for them? I know I have.  If fact, in my entire career of 40 years, the topic of focusing on meaningful change targets has created more questions […]

Prior to ‘What Works’ and soon afterwards EBPs there were few definitive signals about what direction a community corrections organization could or should take. For over 20 years now, however, our field has been faced with the challenge of implementing select EBP to a level of fidelity or competency never previously specified. And though the […]

Thanks to the ground-breaking work of researchers like Ted Palmer, Paul Gendreau, Don Andrews and Jim Bonta, the field of corrections has been engaged in conversations and efforts to realign around the Risk, Need and Responsivity (RNR) principles for almost three decades. RNR forms the foundation for Evidence-Based Practices in case classification world-wide today, as […]