“UNDERSTANDING THE COMMUNITIES IN
WHICH OFFENDERS LIVE IS JUST AS IMPORTANT
AS UNDERSTANDING THE OFFENDERS
THEMSELVES.”
FAITH E. LUTZE, PH.D., WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
DCS FOCUSES ON
EVIDENCE-BASED
SUPERVISION
PRACTICES:
PLACE-BASED,
BALANCED, AND
COLLABORATIVE
Community supervision is most effective when conducted where
people live and work, rather than from an office desk. DCS transitioned
to Place-Based Supervision within the first year of operation.
Place-Based Supervision is a proactive strategy, similar to
community policing, that removes CSOs from the restrictions of
offices and a traditional 9-5 work day. Officers are assigned caseloads
geographically, deployed to neighborhoods where the people they
supervise live and work, and provided with the tools needed to
promote positive behavior while holding offenders accountable,
from anywhere and at any time.
In addition to enabling more effective supervision, Place-Based
Supervision has allowed DCS to decrease office square footage by
more than 10%, allowing us to more productively allocate resources
that would have otherwise gone to maintenance and overhead.
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