Funding Wizard

THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR APPLICATIONS. This announcement is to provide notice of the continuation of funding for cooperative agreement award 21CS20GLH0

THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR APPLICATIONS. This announcement is to provide notice of NIC to make an award without full competition.

THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR APPLICATIONS. This announcement is to provide notice of the continuation of funding for cooperative agreement award 21CS05GLI8.

It is estimated that over 800,000 people return to the community each year following a period of incarceration. Over the years, there has been an increase in the use of parole supervision as institution populations have increased. During 2020, the parole supervision population increased in 30 states and decreased in only 19 states and Washington, DC1.People can transition through the correctional system and reenter society on parole supervision in ways that both improve their chances of success (reduced recidivism) and ensure public safety. Because they are one of the gate keepers to public safety, paroling authorities and their members should have the competencies to effectively deliver paroling services effectively and efficiently. Well prepared paroling authorities understand how to use current research to guide operations that make communities safer.NIC is the only agency that offers state paroling authorities access to free parole board training. In 2010, NIC developed the only training for parole board members in the United States. In 2020, NIC revised the training curricula for parole board members and chairs to be delivered virtually in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both trainings encourage participants to explore their beliefs and how those beliefs influence their work on the parole board. The trainings describe how paroling authorities can use evidence-based decision-making and practices to improve operations. Both trainings, for parole board members and chairs, were designed to equip the boards to:- Make sound and informed release decisions- Build infrastructure and capacity within parole organizations- Understand their unique role as a member of a paroling authorityNIC’s parole board member virtual training is composed of a pre-assignment, virtual sessions, and homework assignments. The virtual sessions were delivered for the first time in the summer of 2021. The post training assessments for the parole board member trainings indicated that while the virtual training was well received, it lacked supportive training materials. A number of the face-to-face training materials were not used in the virtual sessions. The parole board chair virtual training has not yet been delivered. The virtual conversion was completed in 2022.NIC revises its parole board curriculum every 3 years to ensure it is relevant and consists of the most current knowledge and practices in the field. To continue to deliver current virtual trainings to parole board members and chairs, new materials must be added, so NIC can deliver training that meets the changing and ongoing needs of parole boards.

In 2020, the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) established a collaborative venture with the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA) to develop a comprehensive set of black letter standards of practice to guide community supervision policy and practices across the nation. The black letter standards provide consistent national guidance and direction for the community supervision field, and, more specifically, help probation and parole agencies build the case for organizing, staffing, and operating in a manner consistent with the latest knowledge and evidence. In addition, the standards provide guidance about what is effective in producing the desired outcomes of supervision, including safer communities, law abiding and productive persons under supervision, and prudent use of public resources. The standards are definitions established by APPA to model or serve as a minimum acceptable benchmark of correctional practice. APPA is the largest membership organization supporting community supervision professionals at every level of probation and parole organizations and serves over 90,000 community supervision professionals nationally. The standards development effort followed the approach used by the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies (NAPSA), and the format follows the black letter model used in the NAPSA standards. In 2020, NIC and APPA established a workgroup that consisted of both practitioners and researchers who assisted with the development of the first draft of the publication Black Letter Standards of Practice. The goal of the first year of this work was to assess and use research and practitioner input comprehensively to establish sound principles and practices that would support rehabilitation and positive outcomesfor people on community supervision so they could lead productive and law-abiding lives. NIC continues to collaborate with APPA to finalize the draft of the standards that will include accompanying commentary. Additional work will include developing and implementing marketing and education strategies and plans. The Black Letter Standards of Practice document will be the sole ownership of APPA, with NIC providing project management, structure, a draft of the black letter standards, which will include developing accompanying commentary. Additional work will include developing and implementing marketing and education strategies and plans. The goal of this project will be drafting and finalizing the black letter national standards and commentary for adult community supervision (parole and probation) and introducing the standards to the field at the APPA Summer Institute in August 2023. The awardee will work with the APPA project team and workgroup to develop marketing and educational strategies to support the adoption of the national standards by adult community supervision agencies .nd guidance. NIC will retain the right to publish, reproduce, and use any subsequently copyrighted or trademarked material pursuant to the “Rights in Data” paragraph contained in Section F: Federal Award Administration Information.

THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR APPLICATIONS. This announcement is to provide notice of the continuation of funding for cooperative agreement award 21CS24GLI2

THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR APPLICATIONS. This announcement is to provide notice of the continuation of funding for cooperative agreement award 21PR02GLK1

Parole, best known as discretionary release is, the early releasing entity for people serving time in institutions, began in the state of New York and has been a part of the criminal justice system since 1907. By 1942, all the state and federal criminal justice systems implemented a paroling system to determine who could and could not be released early from prison. Paroling authorities had to develop a release decision making process to determine who was “ready” for early release, based on the premise that people who received early released would agree to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including not committing new crimes, in exchange for serving the remainder of their sentence in their community. This agreement to commit no new crimes recognizes that people in the criminal justice system can change their criminal behavior, making parole decisions key to public safety. Over the years, there has been an increase in the use of parole supervision as institutions have been overcrowded. During 2020, the parole supervision population increased in 30 states and decreased in only 19 states and Washington, D.C.1In the 1979 U.S. Supreme Court case Greenholtz v. Inmates of the Nebraska Penal and Correctional Complex, it was established that people who are incarcerated have no “liberty interest” in the parole release process unless an interest is created by state legislation. This ruling meant that most laws/legislation for parole release are determined by state legislature, courts, and parole board member themselves.2 Many paroling authorities have taken steps to establish transparency in how release decisions are made as well as the criteria used. To gather more insight, NIC convened a focus group of several parole boards who stated the importance of establishing a set of foundational principles to guide their release decisions.3Parole releasing decisions should be done with due diligence that is consistent and transparent. The principles guiding parole decision making have evolved over time. It began with an unstructured judgement approach, where board members relied on unclear/unarticulated factors that reflected personal experience, values, beliefs, and “gut feelings.” As the criminal justice field began to embrace evidence-based practices, parole release decision models began to reflect the use of some of these practices. The use of decision matrices is another approach, where a combination of factors are cross referenced with an actuarial risk score. The matrix produces a presumptive parole decision. The structured professional decision guidelines approach uses evidence-based factors that are assigned a rating and calculated into a final score. According to Paroling Authorities Strategic Planning and Management for Results, “the most common and original form of guidelines are matrices incorporating typically, some combination of severity of offense and risk of re-offending bound within specific factors to be considered in each case.4 Today, paroling authorities use some combination of these three basic approaches. As more research is conducted on parole decision making models, more effective models can be developed. Unfortunately, there is scarcity in the research on paroling authorities and the breadth of their decision making.5

In order to assist justice-involved adults with maintaining long-term attachments to the workforce, practitioners must be able to assess those at high risk for job loss, identify specific criminogenic risks, and develop programming in response to the identified risk/need areas. In addition, qualified practitioners increase their effectiveness when utilizing programming and service based on developmental and structural career theories. Criminal justice practitioners and their stakeholders must maintain a communication style supporting the exploration of the values, thoughts and beliefs impacting an individual’s quality of life. The Evidence-based Workforce Development Training provides practitioners with the knowledge and skills required to assist justice-involved adults as they explore the values, thoughts and beliefs resulting in job loss and high recidivism rates.

Over a period of 10 years, the Women’s Risk and Need Assessment (WRNA) was developed based on Canadian research that stressed the importance of assessing and addressing dynamic risk factors and gender-responsive research and theory, including research suggesting that women’s pathways to criminal legal involvement is different from men’s [ChesneyLind, 1997; Daly, 1992]. The research also summarizes the gender-responsive tools that are available for managing and supervising women in various correctional settings [Bloom, Owen, & Covington, 2003; Buell, Modley, & Van Voorhis, 2011; Covington, 1998, 2000]. The premise for the development of the WRNA was that tools currently in use generally over-classified (and on some occasions under-classified) women, and therefore inappropriately assigned them to institutional placement or housing and did not match services and programs to their actual risk and need. Further, services and programs were often not available, as there had been no accurate determination for their need, an outcome based on tools that often overlooked issues more salient to women. Therefore, the mandated completion of assessment and classification tools often became a “paperwork” exercise, and ultimately the assessments were filed away and not used to guide decision-making. Today, the WRNA, a tool that appropriately accounts for women’s risk and need, has been applied nationally and internationally for assessment and case planning with women who are at various points of involvement with the correctional system, from pretrial to community supervision.