Featured Content: An Experimental Demonstration of Training Probation Officers in Evidence-Based Community Supervision

"I jokingly tell people that the Strategic Training Initiative in Community Corrections (STICS) was 20 years in the making. In 1990, I along with my colleagues Don Andrews and Bob Hoge wrote an article that first outlined the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model of effective correctional treatment. Essentially, the RNR model says to focus treatment on the higher risk offender and his/her criminogenic needs using cognitive-behavioral strategies that fit the offender’s learning style. When treatment programs follow these principles we see significant reductions in recidivism. Over the years I devoted much of my professional career expanding upon the RNR model and trying to be an advocate for offender rehabilitation and a thorn in the “get tough” on crime ideology.

Between 2001 and 2004 we had a wonderful opportunity to see if probation officers follow the principles in the one-on-one supervision of offenders. Sixty-two probation officers from the province of Manitoba, which is right in the middle of Canada, agreed to audio record some of their supervision sessions with their clients and open their supervision notes to us. Being a developer of the RNR model I was a bit disappointed in the findings. In general, officers were not adhering closely to the risk principle seeing low risk clients as frequently as high risk clients (despite that fact the policy allowed them to minimize their contact with low risk probationers). Furthermore, analysis of the audio recordings demonstrated poor adherence to the need principle. Although, the criminogenic needs of substance abuse and family/marital were often discussed the major criminogenic need of procriminal attitude was largely ignored. Finally, cognitive-behavioral techniques of intervention were almost completely absent in the interactions between the probation officer and his/her client.

The Manitoba study showed that probation officers were not following the RNR principles very closely and I and my research team decided to develop a training program to help staff better follow the principles. As a Director of a research unit in the federal government that works collaboratively on research with the provinces and territories I was in a unique position to solicit interest to participate in an experiment. The Manitoba study gave us a baseline snapshot of community supervision and demonstrated a need for training. Eventually, three provinces agreed to participate in an evaluation of our RNR-based officer training (i.e., STICS). We found that our training protocol led to improvements in RNR skills as measured by the audio recordings and that the recidivism rate for the clients of the experimental probation officers was 14.5 percentage points lower than the clients of the control officers.

Today we are planning further replications of STICS and our most ambitious replication will involve the roll out of STICS in British Columbia. At the end of this three year project 450 probation officers will have been trained and the province will have the capacity to maintain the STICS model. As this project unfolds we will be carefully monitoring and evaluating our activities to learn how best to transition from a small demonstration project into a large scale implementation."

-James Bonta, regarding "An Experimental Demonstration of Training Probation Officers in Ev... co-authored with Guy Bourgon, Tanya Rugge, Terri-Lynne Scott, Annie K. Yessine, and Leticia Gutierrez, and published in the November 2011 issue of Criminal Justice and Behavior.