Advancing Fairness and Transparency: National Guidelines for Post-Conviction Risk and Needs Assessment

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David A. D’Amora, MS, LPC, CCFC is a senior policy advisor at the CSG Justice Center, is a licensed clinician with 45 years’ experience working in the areas of risk and needs assessment, violent offenders, and offenders with mental illness and has provided technical assistance and consultation to 49 states. At the CSG Justice Center he has co-authored Adults with Behavioral Health Needs under Correctional Supervision: A Shared Framework for Reducing Recidivism and Promoting Recovery (New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2012) and most recently A Five-Level Risk and Needs System: Maximizing Assessment Results in Corrections through the Development of a Common Language (New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2016). Prior to joining the CSG Justice Center, Mr. D’Amora served as the vice president of agency programs for a community-based agency providing multiple types of correctional and behavioral health treatment to formerly incarcerated people under community supervision. He was also a clinician at Somers State Prison and Meriden-Wallingford Hospital in Connecticut as well as a consultant with another national criminal justice technical assistance provider.

Sarah L. Desmarais, Ph.D. is the Senior Vice President and incoming President at Policy Research Associates, Inc. (PRA). Prior to joining PRA in 2021, Dr. Desmarais was a tenured Professor of Psychology at North Carolina State University. Dr. Desmarais works on issues at the intersection of public health, community safety, and social justice. She has authored more than 130 peer-reviewed publications and has provided technical assistance, evaluation services, and consultation to behavioral health, criminal justice, and intelligence agencies throughout the United States and abroad on problems and solutions for implementation, policy, and practice.

Charles Robinson is the Deputy Chief of the Probation & Pretrial Services Office of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. Over the course of more than 20 years, he has worked in both county and federal probation, including supervising a caseload of community supervision clients, training officers, and developing systems to support successful implementation of risk instruments, and serving as a chief probation officer. Charles has co-authored several widely used client and officer training programs for community and custodial correctional settings. Among these programs are Decision Points, an open-group cognitive-behavioral program that teaches clients to observe and interrupt thinking that leads to trouble; and Effective Practices in Correctional Settings (EPICS) II, a training program for criminal justice professionals based on behavioral change strategies found to be effective with criminal justice clients. He has extensive experience as a consultant training agency leaders and staff in juvenile and adult correctional settings. He has helped leaders and agencies in the U.S. and other countries better align their community supervision systems with practices proven to exert a positive effect on clients and their communities. Charles has also co-authored several articles that contribute to the research literature supporting effective practices in community supervision.

Heather Tubman-Carbone, Ph.D., is a criminologist who specializes in translating research and policy into practice. As Senior Policy Advisor for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Dr. Tubman-Carbone oversees its justice reform efforts, including the Justice Reinvestment Initiative and Justice Counts, which take data-driven approaches to create more fair, effective, and efficient state justice systems. In addition, she manages Second Chance Act programs to build corrections and community supervision agencies’ capacity to reduce recidivism and support desistance. Earlier in her career, Dr. Tubman-Carbone worked at Westat and the Prisoner Reentry Institute at John Jay College Prior to joining BJA, Dr. Tubman-Carbone managed a corrections portfolio at the Council of State Governments Justice Center where she oversaw technical assistance provided to state and local corrections agencies to design and implement concrete, research-based strategies to reduce recidivism. She also worked on projects to measure the impact of those initiatives and to disseminate the strategies to practitioners and policymakers in the field. Dr. Tubman-Carbone earned her BA from Northeastern University, her master’s from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice.