During the covid-19 pandemic, corrections agencies worldwide began integrating video conferencing technologies to promote safety and security among staff and justice-involved individuals by limiting…

This federal Project Grant award of $1,157,850 was provided by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) under the NIJ Research, Evaluation, and Development Project Grants program (CFDA 16.560). The award will fund a 3-year research project conducted by RTI International and its partners, the Georgia Department of Community Supervision (DCS) and Core Correctional Solutions (CCS).

The project aims to assess the use of virtual check-ins for community supervision, including analyzing administrative and case management data, conducting qualitative interviews and surveys, piloting software to automatically code in-person and virtual check-in recordings, and performing a cost-effectiveness analysis. Expected outcomes include peer-reviewed publications, non-technical briefs, presentations, webinars, and social media content. CCS will be responsible for coding check-in recordings for fidelity, manually assessing the accuracy of the automated coding, and providing implementation and interpretation support.

During the covid-19 pandemic, corrections agencies worldwide began integrating video conferencing technologies to promote safety and security among staff and justice-involved individuals by limiting in-person contact while also maintaining service delivery to reduce recidivism. Since the end of the pandemic, virtual reporting in community supervision has been retained by many agencies; however, little is known about the impact of using this technology to conduct routine check-INS between officers and people on probation or parole. RTI international and its partners, the georgia department of community supervision (DCS) and core correctional solutions (CCS), propose a statewide assessment of the use of virtual check-INS. . Project activities include establishing a community/practitioner advisory board; analyzing administrative and case management data provided by georgia DCS; conducting qualitative interviews and surveys of community supervision officers and people on supervision to understand their perceptions about the utility of the technology for supervision check-INS; pilot testing ccss praxus software application to automatically code recordings of in-person check-INS, captured using body-worn cameras, and virtual check-INS, recorded using google hangouts, for fidelity to the epics-II model; automatically coding 6,000 recordings of check-INS (3,000 in-person and 3,000 virtual); analyzing fidelity data to compare differences by check-in type; conducting a cost-effectiveness analysis to estimate the cost difference between in-person and virtual check-INS and to see how changes in costs relate to changes in violent or felony arrest rates; and disseminating the results. Expected outcomes include peer-reviewed publications, nontechnical briefs, conference presentations, webinars, podcasts, and an ongoing series of social media content in partnership with an influencer with lived experience. Georgia DCS and other community supervision agencies are the intended beneficiaries of the project. CCS, as a subrecipient, will be responsible for the following activities: coding recordings of check-in sessions for fidelity to epics-II using the praxus application, manually coding sessions for fidelity to assess the accuracy of the application, recalibrating the application as needed, and consulting about the implementation of epics-II and interpretation of the study results. CA/NCF