Combining Substance Abuse Treatment With Intermediate Sanctions for Adults in the Criminal Justice System Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series12
Planning is the most important stage in creating effective intermediate sanctions.
Creating the right mechanism for doing productive planning depends on identifying and involving the appropriate policymakers in the planning process, and developing the best means for them to communicate with each other, with the public, and with others in the criminal justice and treatment communities.
The planning group's work will take it through several steps: examining the current offender population, determining goals for subgroups of that population, evaluating current treatment and intermediate sanction resources, designing and implementing intermediate sanctions programs or redesigning existing programs, integrating them with other programs and services, marketing them to the community, and then continuing to monitor and evaluate progress in meeting the group's original goals.
A planning group that is representative of the criminal justice system, treatment providers, and the community is the best vehicle for carrying out these steps.
Such a group encourages planners to set their sights beyond current boundaries in establishing programs and procedures that will be effective in delivering treatment services in the context of intermediate sanctions.
If the two systems continue to operate the way they have been, we as a society will continue to get the results we have been getting and it is clear that in the case of AOD-involved criminal offenders, these results often are not satisfactory for the offender or the community.
The lack of proper, cross-systems planning and coordination has led to failure by offender-clients in treatment or in the criminal justice system (or both), and it is the individual offender who is seen as responsible for the failure.
A more comprehensive view of the failures of these individuals, set in the context of the systems in which they occur, makes it obvious that in many cases the failure is as much that of the two systems as it is of the individual.
The systems, in too many cases, contribute to participant failure.
A planning group that spans the treatment and criminal justice systems and the community they both serve must engage in wide-ranging discussions centered around new information, and be willing to head in new directions and challenge old boundaries in a way that will have a positive impact on treatment services for the AOD-abusing offender.
Such a group can mediate the two goals that must be served simultaneously in a system that combines some form of intermediate sanctions with AOD treatment: 1) to protect public safety and 2) to help the offender achieve a drug- and crime-free life.
To develop effective policies and programs, a jurisdiction must appreciate both goals and understand how achieving one serves the other.
The group can also demonstrate that the two systems have other common goals and concerns, and that building a consensus is possible.
The multidisciplinary team approach is one that has worked well in many fields and will work well in this task.
A critical early step in this approach is to acknowledge that, in most places, the current approach to offenders with AOD abuse is not working.
Incarceration is not addressing the problem of AOD abuse among offenders.
A growing portion of the public and an increasing number of criminal justice and treatment representatives share this view.
The current approach does not encourage individual success among AOD-abusing offenders.
A major problem is that existing systems are designed to respond uniformly to all populations without consideration for individual needs and cultural diversities.
For ultimate success, the process of collaboration between the criminal justice and AOD treatment systems should not be limited by focusing attention only on short-range goals.
The planning process must go deeper than addressing immediate needs; it must consider root problems for these AOD-abusing offenders, including unemployment, the lack of education, dysfunctional families, and the lack of adequate support systems.
A discussion of developing effective programs must begin with how they will address these issues--that is, the need to educate clients, to habilitate and rehabilitate them, to provide job training, and to match people with appropriate support systems.
This will likely require programs to look beyond the criminal justice and treatment systems for continuation of care once those systems have fulfilled their goals.
Planning is the most important stage in creating effective intermediate sanctions.
Creating the right mechanism for doing productive planning depends on identifying and involving the appropriate policymakers in the planning process, and developing the best means for them to communicate with each other, with the public, and with others in the criminal justice and treatment communities.
The planning group's work will take it through several steps: examining the current offender population, determining goals for subgroups of that population, evaluating current treatment and intermediate sanction resources, designing and implementing intermediate sanctions programs or redesigning existing programs, integrating them with other programs and services, marketing them to the community, and then continuing to monitor and evaluate progress in meeting the group's original goals.
A planning group that is representative of the criminal justice system, treatment providers, and the community is the best vehicle for carrying out these steps.
Such a group encourages planners to set their sights beyond current boundaries in establishing programs and procedures that will be effective in delivering treatment services in the context of intermediate sanctions.
If the two systems continue to operate the way they have been, we as a society will continue to get the results we have been getting and it is clear that in the case of AOD-involved criminal offenders, these results often are not satisfactory for the offender or the community.
The lack of proper, cross-systems planning and coordination has led to failure by offender-clients in treatment or in the criminal justice system (or both), and it is the individual offender who is seen as responsible for the failure.
A more comprehensive view of the failures of these individuals, set in the context of the systems in which they occur, makes it obvious that in many cases the failure is as much that of the two systems as it is of the individual.
The systems, in too many cases, contribute to participant failure.
A planning group that spans the treatment and criminal justice systems and the community they both serve must engage in wide-ranging discussions centered around new information, and be willing to head in new directions and challenge old boundaries in a way that will have a positive impact on treatment services for the AOD-abusing offender.
Such a group can mediate the two goals that must be served simultaneously in a system that combines some form of intermediate sanctions with AOD treatment: 1) to protect public safety and 2) to help the offender achieve a drug- and crime-free life.
To develop effective policies and programs, a jurisdiction must appreciate both goals and understand how achieving one serves the other.
The group can also demonstrate that the two systems have other common goals and concerns, and that building a consensus is possible.
The multidisciplinary team approach is one that has worked well in many fields and will work well in this task.
A critical early step in this approach is to acknowledge that, in most places, the current approach to offenders with AOD abuse is not working.
Incarceration is not addressing the problem of AOD abuse among offenders.
A growing portion of the public and an increasing number of criminal justice and treatment representatives share this view.
The current approach does not encourage individual success among AOD-abusing offenders.
A major problem is that existing systems are designed to respond uniformly to all populations without consideration for individual needs and cultural diversities.
For ultimate success, the process of collaboration between the criminal justice and AOD treatment systems should not be limited by focusing attention only on short-range goals.
The planning process must go deeper than addressing immediate needs; it must consider root problems for these AOD-abusing offenders, including unemployment, the lack of education, dysfunctional families, and the lack of adequate support systems.
A discussion of developing effective programs must begin with how they will address these issues--that is, the need to educate clients, to habilitate and rehabilitate them, to provide job training, and to match people with appropriate support systems.
This will likely require programs to look beyond the criminal justice and treatment systems for continuation of care once those systems have fulfilled their goals.
This does not mean that there is no consequence for relapse.
The intermediate sanction plan must include consequences that can be built into the treatment protocol for each client.
The treatment provider can address relapse and its consequences with increased program opportunities.
Requiring an offender-client to attend an extra hour of counseling or a support group may not seem like much of a sanction, but for the client it means extra control and less freedom.
Another option for responding to relapse is a longer stay in AOD treatment, although it is important that this consideration be driven by the offender's treatment needs, not punishment.
These issues are discussed at greater length in other chapters of this volume.
The continuum of treatment, sanctions, and expectations must be matched.
Informed judges will understand that relapse does not mean complete failure.
With effective programs in place, it will become apparent that treating the offender in the community creates a better environment for long-term change than incarceration.
The availability of adequate treatment resources is an issue for both the treatment and criminal justice systems.
A court or paroling authority can order treatment, but if there is insufficient treatment capacity, the order is meaningless.
Even with increases over current levels, there will still not be enough treatment resources to meet the need.
It is imperative, therefore, that the planning group make careful and explicit decisions about the best use of those resources.
It must define the population for whom new and existing programs and sanctioning options are intended, and specify the outcomes that can be reasonably expected for those populations.
This means making difficult choices and decisions about what would be most beneficial for the community as well as for individual offenders.
To define appropriate populations, decide on reasonable outcomes, and make the best use of available funds, the planning team needs good information about the characteristics of the offender population in their jurisdiction that needs AOD treatment, including data on current offense, criminal and corrections history, AOD abuse history, and demographic information.
These data should be objective and quantified data, to the extent that automated systems can provide the data.
If hard data are not available, anecdotal information is acceptable as a starting point until objective data can be made available.
If automated systems cannot produce the necessary information, the planning group may need to use population samples and retrieve data from hard-copy files.
There are often university faculty available who can advise the group on data collection methodology, and students who can do some of the collection and tabulation.
With the data, the planning team will be able to identify subgroups within the offender population, that is, groups having similar characteristics relative to AOD abuse patterns, treatment needs, offenses, and criminal history.
Determinations can then be made about which groups should be targeted for treatment resources.
The planning team also needs information about the treatment resources available in the community for offender-clients.
An inventory of resources may prove quite revealing, and should go beyond traditional treatment programs to take a creative look at other institutions--such as churches, charities, and universities--that may offer program possibilities.
The questions that must be asked include:
What sanctions and programs does the criminal justice system presently use with this population?
What other resources does the criminal justice system have available to deal with this population?
What other treatment resources are available in the community?
How effective are various treatment modalities, particularly with this population?
Since there are not enough resources to go around, the stakeholders on the policy planning team must make choices about who is going to get what services.
The team may first want to give careful consideration to the currently incarcerated offender/AOD population to determine who would benefit from intermediate sanctions programs.
Broad policy must be established to address the questions and establish priorities:
Do we give services to the people who ask for them?
Do we give them to the offenders who are the most dangerous?
Do we give services to offenders who have the best chance of success?
Do we give them to offenders who are most in need?
Criteria for prioritization must include the offender's level of risk to public safety if not treated, his or her amenability to treatment, and the chances of success, in addition to whatever other factors a particular jurisdiction might choose.
The planning team must decide how these various factors will be weighted in determining which offender-clients can receive treatment.
They must create programs that respond to people truly in need and be careful to avoid a potential pitfall of designing programs that respond to the easier cases and the clients who have the most supports and bypass clients with deeply entrenched problems and few supports.
If the team does not decide how to weigh the various indicators of need, there is a danger of net widening by using or imposing intermediate sanction treatment programs on offenders whose crimes are not serious enough to justify such significant sanctions.
The definition of the target populations should be related as well to the other goals of intermediate sanctions.
One jurisdiction may prefer to target only first offenders, while another seeks treatment for third offenders as a last opportunity to divert this group from jail.
Once its decisions have been made, the team must turn them into clear criteria for admission to the program or programs.
Because of their "intermediate" nature, intermediate sanctions are appealing for a wide variety of offenders, representing a range of offenses and risk.
Not all offenders are suitable for intermediate sanctions, or for those available in a particular jurisdiction.
Clear criteria that have been agreed-to by the key stakeholders will serve to protect the integrity of the programs and avoid net-widening.
Once the criteria have been determined, the planning team should investigate and determine how many offenders in the jurisdiction will meet the criteria of the target population, as specified.
This data-informed definition of the target population should be part of the design of the intermediate sanctions program(s).
For effective programming, planners must carefully match the size of the target group to the available resources, and care should be taken to not overextend the resources.
It is especially important as programs are being established that they not be overwhelmed.
Successful programs should be replicated rather than expanded.
For maximum efficacy of programs, existing community resources should be used as adjuncts to treatment and criminal justice programs.
These can include:
Self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, Rational Recovery, and Women for Sobriety
Parenting programs
Mentoring programs
GED or other educational programs
Job development, training, and placement
Life skills management courses
Nutrition courses
Stress reduction programs
Instruction for risk reduction for sexual behavior, including HIV/AIDS education
Volunteer groups.
Using these community resources can address the collateral needs of offender-clients in a practical and affordable way that does not require additional funding.
Good case management by either or both the treatment provider and the corrections agency will provide appropriate referrals, or these resources can be integrated into the sanction itself; for example, participation in a job training program as a condition of probation.
These resources should be made a part of the treatment continuum, and matched with an offender based on the assessment of his or her stage of addiction and needs in other life areas.
For new resources that will be developed, gender and cultural issues must be considered, so that the resources will match the needs and makeup of the client population.
Again, funding and resources will always be limited, so appropriateness of a program for particular offenders must be considered as new options are developed.
Another way to attack the problem of limited resources is to consider reducing the size or redirecting the services of programs that may be effective but that are not addressing clients with the most need.
Systems need to make a bold assessment of their needs and the priority of existing programs, and rethink how they are allocating their resources.
Systems need to make a bold assessment of their needs and the priority of existing programs, and rethink how they are allocating resources.
Even if the resources are available, it is important to avoid trying to put too many new programs into operation at once.
New programs must be monitored for effectiveness, and while a range of options is important, going in too many directions at once will divert focus and attention.
As the planning team explores funding sources, it should also consider whatever contributions the client can make.
Whenever possible, the client should pay for assessment and treatment programs, including fees for urine testing and other chemical screens.
These charges can be assessed on a sliding fee scale, according to the client's ability to pay.
Once the program or programs have been developed, the planning team must choose the best way to implement them, including how they will be managed and how the collaborative process will be maintained.
The decision about management will depend in part on the location of the actual programs and services.
If most services are provided under the auspices of the probation agency, then a senior manager within that agency might serve as overall manager-coordinator of intermediate sanctions efforts.
If the programs involve many different providers and agencies, then it may be appropriate to place responsibility with the court administrator.
It is critical that the person chosen have the power and authority to maintain communication and collaboration among the key stakeholders.
The responsibility for management is not something that should be simply added to someone's existing workload.
A manager must have special training, special skills, management expertise, and the time necessary to do the job correctly.
This manager should be a person who clearly understands goals of intermediate sanctions programs, who can work with everyone in the system, and who has credibility with all in the system.
Effective, successful intermediate sanctions programs require ongoing communication, both within the treatment and criminal justice systems and between them.
The policy planning team is the key to beginning this process, and that team has an obligation to put in place the mechanisms by which communication will continue.
With representation from across the agencies of both systems, the planning team can identify where obstacles and opportunities exist regarding good communication.
Communication between the treatment and criminal justice systems must begin at the system level and must be carried on daily at the case level.
In order to coordinate the two systems to work together for the offender, representatives from both must communicate about:
An important ingredient, which should be addressed in the planning stages, is defining how communication will take place among key players in the process in order to ensure that everyone linked to the intermediate sanctions programs is part of the communications loop, with the ability to initiate communication, receive it, and respond to it.
Planning team members can and should play an important role in facilitating communication in two directions.
Team members should be a liaison between their particular discipline and the team, explaining their discipline to the team, and taking the concerns of the team back to their colleagues.
As a team member, an individual becomes the listener for his or her colleagues or constituent group.
He or she is also the point person, soliciting opinions to take back to the group.
There has been considerable discussion of the problem of inappropriate referrals in this and earlier chapters.
Communication is essential in avoiding such referrals.
Once the policy planning team has decided on criteria for sanctions and programs, the decisionmakers and gatekeepers in both systems should be trained not only about what the criteria are, but also about why the team chose them.
In particular, the team must secure the agreement of judges to the criteria to ensure their commitment to the effort, and to avoid their flooding the programs with offenders who need treatment but whose offense may not justify the allocation of scarce treatment resources.
Probation officers, district attorneys, defense attorneys, police officers, and treatment providers should all be educated about the criteria for program participation.
To make appropriate referrals and determine whether individuals meet the criteria for program participation, decisionmakers and gatekeepers need adequate information about the offender.
One of the most important sources of that information is the presentence investigation report, which is prepared by the probation department for the judge.
The presentence report contains descriptive information about the offender and the offense and recommendations for sentencing.
Whenever possible, the presentence report should include results of urinalysis or other chemical testing, and AOD assessment findings and recommendations.
The presentence investigation report, which is prepared by the probation department for the judge, contains descriptive information about the offender and the offense and the recommendations for sentencing.
Good communication rests on a foundation of sound and current information.
To foster good communication, all of the players involved must be asked what information they want or require.
The planning team should establish system mechanisms to obtain that information.
Judges may want regular reports on program effectiveness, on the progress of individual offenders, and on offenders who do not follow the requirements of the program.
Judges will require reports on offenders who violate the terms of a court order.
However, it is important that feedback on offender-clients include both positive and negative information; judges and other criminal justice officials should be provided with information about offender-clients who successfully complete programs.
This range of feedback can serve as a gauge of the efficacy of certain intermediate sanctions programs with particular kinds of offenders.
This knowledge can guide future referrals.
Supervising corrections agencies will want to know about participants' progress in treatment, including the results of urine screens.
They will begin with basic questions, such as whether offenders are reporting for treatment.
There may be issues that surface in the course of treatment that indicate a need for more or less intensive supervision.
These may include ongoing criminal behavior, appointments kept and appointments missed, and individual successes in the programs.
As treatment begins, treatment providers want to know the offender's criminal history, mental health or special needs history, special physical needs, and the full terms of the sentence.
It is recommended that the treatment agency receive a copy of the full sentencing order.
They should also have access to a presentence report.
Releases and/or legislative changes may be necessary to make some of this information accessible.
Because of the need for sharing information, offender-clients should be advised of the importance of signing releases.
Signing such as release may often be a condition of entering an intermediate sanctions program.
It is important that this mechanism be set up from the start to facilitate smooth and continuous exchange of information between agencies.
Treatment agencies also want to know about any change in the justice status of the offender-client, and the offender-client's progress in meeting other special conditions of the sentence.
These conditions may include participating in other programs, paying restitution, and meeting personal financial obligations such as paying rent and child support.
Each jurisdiction must decide for itself what sort of mechanisms will be established to facilitate the process of communication, but it is important that someone assume responsibility for ensuring that communication in individual cases is an ongoing process.
The supervising agency is the logical choice for that responsibility since that agency is charged with overseeing the orders of the court in individual cases.
However, it is also important to emphasize that every player has a responsibility for communication and continuing feedback.
To facilitate continuing communications on a systems level, it is important that the intermediate sanctions planning and policy development team hold meetings on at least a quarterly basis.
Attendance of members should be mandatory, or at least a top priority, for all involved.
In addition to regular meetings, other mechanisms that will facilitate communication include:
Letters of agreement. These are documents between systems agreed upon at the front end of the process.
They are similar to purchase of service agreements.
They are designed to define boundaries between criminal justice and treatment systems and set general parameters, laying out specific criteria for admission and other conditions, so that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined.
These agreements are discussed in detail in an earlier chapter.
Quarterly summary. This summary is a regular report on what the program has accomplished, quantifying such items as completion rates, urine test results, and other performance indicators.
Program manual. A brief baseline description of the program, including eligibility criteria, will assist communication.
Orientation program. A thorough orientation must be available for all personnel involved.
This is part of training, which is discussed further in the section on training.
Another level of communication involves workers communicating with each other about actual cases, as offender-clients move through both systems.
This is discussed further in the section on case management in an earlier chapter.
Intermediate sanctions programs are rooted in the larger community, and continuing communication with this community as programs are being established and maintained is essential for success of the programs.
As programs are in the planning stages, they must be marketed to the public.
The public should be informed where the programs will be located and what kinds of offenders will participate.
They should be aware of the general theory of intermediate sanctions.
Public outreach and information can be approached in many different ways:
Public information, question-and-answer sessions. It is particularly important for the planning team to reach out to victim organizations and to include them in such sessions.
Outreach to the media. The media should be provided with information about a program that works, and in most cases will be only too happy to publicize success stories that will balance the usually bleak criminal justice stories that fill newspaper pages and television newscasts.
Speaking to community groups. Speaking to outside groups provides something of a reality check and is a way of ensuring feedback so that planners and program designers and managers don't lose touch with what people in the community think.
Volunteer advisory groups. These groups can involve interested community members without specific professional interest in the process of planning and developing programs.
However, in informing the public about these programs, it is important that information be disseminated in the context of realistic expectations for the programs--for example, some offenders in intermediate sanctions may commit crimes while in the program.
But the message that these programs are largely effective can dominate.
The concept of graduated sanctions is a primary ingredient in the effectiveness of intermediate sanctions and increases their credibility with the criminal justice system.
Graduated sanctions is increasing or decreasing of requirements, levels of supervision, or limits on movement in order to ensure appropriate and consistent response by clients in all aspects of the intermediate sanctions program.
There must be consequences for relapse or failure to participate in a program, but these must be consistent with the intent and sanctioning goals of the original sentence.
Some examples of graduated sanctions from the criminal justice side include:
Increasing community service hours
Enforcing short-term jail time
Adding electronic monitoring to home arrest
Adding a daily report by the offender-client to his or her probation/parole officer
Switching from regular probation to intensive probation
htening curfew hours
Attending a day reporting center or program
rom the treatment side, graduated sanctions might include:
Requiring participation in a relapse program
Increasing the frequency of treatment contacts
Increasing required attendance at AA or NA meetings
Increasing frequency of urinalysis
Moving the client to a more restrictive treatment program, for example, from outpatient to residential
Requiring attendance at other self-help meetings
Adding a mentoring program
Requiring stricter reporting of job search efforts.
It should be noted that many of these consequences are used by both systems, and that there may be treatment consequences for criminal justice violations and enhanced restrictions or requirements for treatment program failures.
When the two systems support each other's goals, their actions and responses to behavior will become increasingly interrelated.
It is the responsibility of the case manager to look, when necessary, for the most appropriate intervention or response and to address the situation on a continuous basis as needed.
Compliance and consequences are issues that should be addressed both individually, on a case-by-case basis, and systemically by the policy team.
The primary goal must be the certainty of consequences: if a client is not compliant with treatment and criminal justice requirements, neither system will allow the client to slide.
The primary goal must be the certainty of consequences: if a client is not compliant with treatment and criminal justice requirements, neither system will allow the client to slide.
Consequences of relapse must be written into a treatment plan, including the fact that incarceration might be an eventual consequence of repeated relapse.
Incarceration, however, should only follow a series of less extreme, progressive consequences.
The point of incarceration as a consequence must be specified; for example, incarceration may be required after a certain number of positive urine tests in a certain period of time.
This approach is necessary to maintain credibility with the criminal justice system.
The offender's own dynamics also have to be figured into the determination of consequences.
For some offenders "doing time" is preferable to "doing treatment." The case manager may need to be creative in developing meaningful responses to behavior that do not also give the offender-client a way to avoid treatment.
Training must be done across systems and must integrate personnel from both.
Training can begin with a presentation from the policy planning team.
Once the planning group has developed the criteria for the intermediate sanctions, group members should be prepared to make a large group presentation to the various players who will be involved.
It is important that more than just a single discipline present the curriculum to the group being trained.
General topics that should be covered in training include:
Training goals and program goals
Common ground and common language that the AOD treatment and criminal justice systems share
How systems and roles can be clarified
How the two systems can effectively communicate, work together, and manage conflicts
Cultural competence
Confidentiality requirements
Effective case management for the AOD-involved offender
The rationale for intermediate sanctions programs for drug offenders
Eligibility criteria for intermediate sanctions programs and how to apply them in individual cases
The role of criminal justice and treatment personnel in the program
Reporting requirements and agreements
A broad overview of how the criminal justice and treatment systems work.
The curriculum should also cover needs and approaches to special populations in each jurisdiction, such as women, minorities, the dually diagnosed, and any other offender-clients with special needs.
Input from these communities is necessary in developing the curriculum so that this material is accurate, relevant, and culturally sensitive.
Participants in training should include:
Judges
Prosecutors
Probation officers
Treatment administrators
Treatment providers
Clinicians
Public treatment-funding agencies
Defense attorneys
Others involved with the programs.
A less detailed presentation should be provided to key policymakers, such as State and local legislators and advisors to the State or county executive.
Newly appointed decisionmakers who will be involved with intermediate sanctions, such as new judges, should receive individual training.
Inservice training should be provided to practitioners in both intermediate sanctions programs and AOD treatment programs who will be handling the actual cases.
This training should cover the respective needs and goals of both systems, as well as mechanics of the programs and operational requirements and expectations.
One of the most important elements in implementing intermediate sanctions programs is building in the capability to learn whether sanctions are serving the populations for which they were intended, whether programs are delivering the services that they promised, and what kinds of sanctions and programs work best for which kinds of offenders.
The planning team should assure that a mechanism to collect the necessary data is introduced into the design of programs from the outset.
The team should also create the means for gathering and analyzing data for evaluation of program effectiveness, for monitoring, and for program redesign.
In designing the program, the planning group should address these issues and either create the evaluation component itself or create a subgroup to do so.
From the first day of planning for intermediate sanctions with AOD treatment, the development of integrated management information systems (MIS) should be part of the process.
Whenever resources allow, information should be automated, so that data can be readily aggregated and analyzed.
If the necessary resources (computer hardware and software and data retrieval systems that can be integrated) are not currently available, data should be collected in a form that can easily be automated.
As part of the planning process, the planning group must define what it wants to measure, including particular outcomes, offender characteristics, and indicators of supervision and service delivery.
Once the team has decided what it wants to know, it can seek advice on the best way and the most reliable measures to capture the information.
When resources allow, a unified database system should be set up to serve the treatment and criminal justice system needs for monitoring and evaluation.
The kinds of data that such a system would capture should be chosen by the members of the planning team based on the outcomes desired and indicators selected.
Data elements might include:
New arrests
Successful completion of treatment
Reduced drug consumption
Results of drug screens
Differences in drug use
Successful discharge from probation
Changes in employment status
Appointments kept and missed
Restitution payments made or missed
School attendance
Personal relationships.
One specific problem that should be carefully monitored is net-widening, which would bring an offender into a more restrictive setting because it might help the offender, even though the individual's criminal offense does not justify the level of intervention.
Although all of those involved in the sentencing decision contribute to the problem of net-widening, judges are probably most responsible for it.
As discussed earlier in this document, the very availability of intermediate sanctions, which allow punitive and restrictive criminal justice sanctions and treatment referral without actual incarceration, can serve as an invitation to net-widening.
Clear, tightly drawn criteria and a good monitoring and feedback system are the best ways to combat the problem.
The team, however, has to take responsibility for developing such procedures and for using the resulting information to counter the problem by changing behavior.
As programs are implemented, the monitoring and evaluation function can help to assess a reasonable caseload.
A program that is overextended will not be effective, and it is particularly vital that these first efforts be as effective as possible.
Data related to all of these issues should be communicated through a shared computerized database when possible, with common reports; a quarterly report to summarize trends, as discussed above; and periodic meetings to analyze data and determine patterns.
This is important so that the success or failure of programs can be assessed.
Evaluation data must be fed back to all involved personnel so that the programs and the systems can be constantly revised and fine tuned.
To facilitate the creation of such an information system, the policy group needs to look at the resources and current capabilities of all the agencies that are involved and determine where the greatest access point is, or divide responsibilities and create a mechanism to bring information together.
The funding for the data system and for continuing monitoring and evaluation must be built into the initial funding for the program, and kept as a part of the operating budget.
Through the process of planning, implementing, and monitoring an effectively combined intermediate sanctions/AOD treatment program, the planning team plays a critical role.
Its responsibilities go beyond planning to oversee implementation, refine the program, and ensure its integrity in operation.
To summarize, these are the tasks of the team and its members:
Determine the goals and desired outcomes for such efforts in their jurisdiction.
Identify the population to be served by such programs and sanctions.
Identify the likely needs of the target population for treatment and collateral services.
Collect data needed to confirm the intended population and their numbers in the system.
Outline the program.
Establish criteria for each program.
Determine which agencies and community groups should be involved.
Determine economic and political obstacles to intermediate sanctions.
Participate in considerations of facility locations.
Determine funding sources.
Advocate for the program with funding and legislative bodies.
Develop a political strategy to market the program to legislators.
Identify legislative barriers, if any (such as mandatory minimum sentences), and recommend adoption of any needed legislative or administrative rule changes.
Determine management information system needs.
Oversee implementation of the program.
Define problem areas and propose solutions.
Ensure communication between all participants in the process.
Advocate for what is working.
Ensure that all subpopulations are being served effectively.
Utilize the results of evaluations for program enhancements, translating them into direct change when the data or evaluation warrants it.
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