INTERSECTIONS
ADDRESSING BARRIERS IS CRITICAL TO SUCCESS
8. Mental Health
Facing complex challenges( e. g., homelessness, addiction, and victimization), individuals with mental illnesses experience increased odds of supervision failure, such as rearrests and revocations. Unsurprisingly, assisting people with mental illness takes an emotional toll on officers, which affects their willingness or ability to deliver evidence-based supervision. Hence, we devote much attention to increasing our understanding of the intersection between community supervision and mental illness.
Adopting a Case Consultation Model to Enhance Mental Health Supervision
With support from the Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program, we are conducting a multi-site pilot project to improve service delivery for people with mental health needs. This project will support officers through clinical case consultations that build their skills and knowledge to assist clients with mental illnesses.
Research Partner: Tonya Van Deinse, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill( UNC)
Mental Health Special Conditions
In addition to matching risk level to supervision intensity and prioritizing the criminogenic needs that drive recidivism, the RNR framework calls for us to address individual characteristics that inhibit engagement in and adherence to supervision( i. e., the Responsivity principle). Yet, it is unclear how including a mental health condition as part of a person’ s parole impacts their supervision experience. Therefore, we are assessing the relationships between mental health conditions, officer decisions, mental health engagement of supervisees, and criminal justice outcomes.
Research Partner: Michael Applegarth, University at Buffalo( UB)
9. Addiction
A disproportionate number of supervisees are dealing with substance use issues, which is one of the primary criminogenic needs directly related to recidivism. Thus, DCS offers a range of direct services to support individuals with addiction. Two of these services are Day Reporting Centers and the Matrix Recovery Program.
Day Reporting Center Program Assessment Tool( DRC-PAT)
Since 2002, DCS has provided evidence-based behavioral health services through DRCs, including community supervision, cognitive behavioral therapy( i. e., Moral Reconation Therapy), addiction treatment, and psychosocial interventions( e. g., GED, vocational training, and family reunification services). Given the scope of services provided, there was a need to assess the quality of DRCs to ensure that the programs’ implementation aligns with research. For this reason, we developed the DRC-PAT as a validated instrument for evaluating program quality across all DRCs.
Research Partner: Orion Mowbray, University of Georgia( UGA)
DCS FY25 Research Agenda Page 8