Intensive Sessions

But What Can I Do to Change Behavior in 20 Minutes? Using Graduated Responses in Community Corrections

Sunday, August 18 | 8:00am-12:00pm

Increasingly, criminal and juvenile justice supervision organizations are recognizing the importance of giving staff tools to respond to client behavior in a graduated manner, incorporating both sanctions and incentives, to support behavior change and reduce recidivism. With large caseloads, supervision staff are often stretched for time and struggle to find ways to incorporate graduated responses in an effective and efficient way. This interactive workshop, based on the Principles of Effective Intervention and Core Correctional Practices, will teach community corrections staff how to effectively use graduated responses with the individuals they supervise. The skills taught in this workshop, including developing rapport, talking about incentives and sanctions, and responding to behaviors, aim to build on the strengths of community corrections staff to influence prosocial behavior change and address behaviors quickly and appropriately.

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Creating Inclusive Communities: Honoring the Diversity Between Each Other and Preparing for Interactions with Those We Work With

Sunday, August 18 | 8:00am-12:00pm

In this interactive workshop, participants will explore techniques for examining how identities impact their perception, experiences, and interpersonal relations in their work and the community. Participants will reflect internally on the diversity around their identities, their intersections, and cultures. We will also explore concepts of socialization and learned behaviors, identify cycles of socialization and develop an understanding of equity vs. equality. These principles will help individuals prepare their agencies to honor the diversity between individuals. It will help them to begin preparing their agencies for interactions with the diverse identities of staff, clientele and stakeholders. Recognizing that change starts with the individual, The Nebraska Administrative Office of the Courts and Probation partnered with Inclusive Communities of Omaha (Nebraska) to launch a branch-wide Inclusive Communities Initiative in 2017. Presenters will share how this initiative has been forging creative partnerships, training capacity and communities of practice to create an inclusive organization.

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Rethinking Juvenile Probation: Three Key Lessons Learned from a Decade of Systems Reform and How to Apply Them to Getting Improved Youth Outcomes for Your Agency

Sunday, August 18 | 8:00am-12:00pm

As juvenile incarceration rates have declined nationally by over 50% in the last decade, juvenile probation agencies are increasingly challenged to serve higher-risk youth and address the complex array of the needs of youth in the community. This intensive session will challenge juvenile probation leaders, managers, and staff to consider the need to not simply tweak their approaches, but to institute fundamental changes in three key areas of policy, practice, and funding to significantly reduce recidivism and improve outcomes for youth. Participants will benefit from learning from national experts on research, best practice from other jurisdictions, implementation science, and out-of-the-box approaches to diversion; instituting and enforcing conditions of probation; and repositioning probation officers as agents of positive youth behavior change. In each area, participants will have the opportunity to share challenges and best practices with their peers and identify concrete next steps for system improvement in their own local jurisdictions.

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Managing for Daily Improvement through Visual Engagement Boards

Sunday, August 18 | 1:00-5:00pm

During the last 18 months, the Riverside County Probation Department has commenced a lean transformation to increase efficiency and eliminate waste within our organization. A key element in our continuous improvement process is the utilization of Visual Engagement Boards (VEB) that reflect real time operational data. The VEB allow managers to coach and mentor staff and make operation standards quicker and easier to understand. In addition, the VEB provide motivation and improvement among staff by clarifying key performance targets. This workshop will provide attendees the tools to build VEB that are specific to probation daily operations. It allows for immediate problem-solving to continuously improve the way work is done by validating problems with data and gives a voice to the people experiencing those problems. Lastly, the VEB creates opportunities for recognition of performance.

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Pulling Back the Curtain on, “Research Says…”: Understanding Research, Talking about Change, and Trusting Evidence-Based Practices

Sponsored by the APPA Research and Review Committee

Sunday, August 18 | 1:00-5:00pm

This workshop invites attendees at all levels in their organization to “pull back the curtain” on a commonly-used rationale for implementing new programs and practices in their agencies: “because research says so.” Attendees will learn the “nuts and bolts” of how practices receive the evidence-based label, the state of the research on probation EBPs, and how to build trust in research with staff who are tasked with using EBPs daily. This is not a repeat of the methods or statistics course taken in college, rather the workshop’s approach is to help practitioners consider research evidence in context of their existing agency programs and practices, and help identify and make informed decisions about selecting, implementing, and adapting new evidenced-based practices. This workshop is ideal for evidence-based practices managers, upper administration, subject matter experts, coaches, and line officers looking to advance their knowledge, and feel more confident about what works because “research says” it does.

In this interactive session, attendees will learn how to:

• Understand how evidence-based practices receive the label and the challenges of the EBP definition.
• Examine and articulate the current research on: Risk/Need Assessment, Case Planning, and Case-Plan Driven Supervision, and identify current gaps in knowledge.
• Identify the questions to ask about research and the core components of a program or practice to implement it successfully.
• Build trust and buy-in of the research among staff who use EBPs daily.
• Frame change to staff at multiple levels in the organization about implementation or renovating an EBP.
• Collaborate more effectively with researchers to improve the nuance of probation work on the ground.

Presenters

What Were You Thinking? A Cognitive-Behavioral Approach to Community Supervision

Sunday, August 18 | 1:00-5:00pm

Increasingly, community corrections officers are being asked to do more than temporarily monitor the clients under their authority, such as an expectation of them is to positively influence behavior and reduce reoffending among their clients. Successful supervision requires a focus on a set of risk domains and thinking patterns that facilitate criminal behavior, beyond probation conditions and mental health symptoms. Step-by-step guidelines will be provided for analyzing specific criminal events to better understand the relative influence of criminogenic thinking patterns (e.g., beliefs that drive criminal and self-destructive behaviors) and other key risk domains (e.g., substance misuse, antisocial companions, maladaptive leisure time) at the time offenses were committed by clients. The analysis of criminal events provides a unique snapshot of the potential causes and maintenance of criminal behavior that can enhance risk assessments, guide supervision discussions, and identify relevant intervention targets for community practitioners. This workshop also highlights the unique academic-agency collaboration transforming adult and juvenile probation in Connecticut.

Presenters

Domestic Violence Supervision Strategies and Messaging for Addressing Intimate Partner Violence

Sunday, August 18 | 8:00am-5:00pm

Domestic Violence offenders, especially Men who Strangle violate at a statistically higher rate than the general probation population and when they do violate the consequences to the victim and our communities can be lethal. Current research suggests that probation officers are uniquely positioned to change lives through proper assessment, referrals and monitoring.  Incorporating many of the lessons learned with The Institute on Strangulation Presentation this interactive session will examine first the complexities of Strangulations and other high-risk offenses. Then we will look at the messages the courts send to offenders, their victims and their children about who is responsible for the violence. We will discuss the research around supervision. What policies can send the message that victim safety is our top priority and insistence that offenders can and must change their behavior. Participants will be challenged on their beliefs on what causes violence, and how best to address the underlying causes through supervision, support, accountability and intervention. We will explore different models that address violence and how probation can work hand in hand to advance intervention and offender behavior change.

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Using the Impaired Driving Assessment

Sunday, August 18 | 8:00am-5:00pm

This event will provide participants with the knowledge and skills to properly administer and use the Impaired Driving Assessment (IDA) with supervisees convicted of an impaired-driving offense. Upon completion, participants will gain full access to all IDA materials to use with supervisees within their respective jurisdictions. The IDA acts as a screener to provide an estimate risk level among supervisees, identify their potential service needs, assess their responsivity to intervention efforts, and considers the degree to which their behaviors have compromised traffic and public safety. It was developed by APPA in collaboration with experts in the assessment field with support from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

This training event is supported through funding by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation (DTNH22-15-H-00481). Points of view or opinions stated in this training event are those of the faculty and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

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