Annual Report 2020 || External . Affairs @ dcs . ga . gov . com || www . dcs . ga . gov
P-22
Event
Day Reporting Center Evaluation —
The road to recovery can be full of detours . Sometimes people need extra guidance to find their pathway to success .
That ’ s the idea behind Georgia ’ s Day Reporting Centers . Since 2002 , these centers have provided intensive , community-based counseling and rehabilitative services for nonviolent probationers and parolees with substance use and mental health problems . Those who complete programs at the centers have a better chance of staying out of jail and reintegrating back into society .
The Georgia Department of Community Supervision manages the state ’ s centers , and desired to enhance the opportunities for positive outcomes but needed to know the right metrics to measure . That has been difficult because evaluation methods typically used for DRCs rely on tools primarily adapted from more custodial settings such as prisons , jails and detention centers . As a consequence , administrators have been uncertain of where improvements are needed .
Until now . In December 2019 , DCS partnered with the University of Georgia School of Social Work to develop a better way to assess program quality and participant outcomes .
Led by associate professor Orion Mowbray , researchers from the school developed and implemented a comprehensive process to evaluate operations of centers that serve both urban and rural areas in the state . From the evaluation , the researchers established an authoritative assessment tool and demonstrated that better assessment scores were associated with better outcomes for DRC participants , including fewer positive drug tests , fewer felony charges and fewer probation revocations .