Building the Capacity of Community-Facing Agencies to Implement Evidence-Based Practices

The Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center (Urban), in partnership with the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA) and the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC), is conducting a study to advance the evidence-implementation capacity of two types of criminal justice system agencies that directly interact with people in the community: 1) probation and parole agencies that supervise people in the community who have harmed and 2)victim service providers that assist people in the community who have been harmed. We are conducting conduct a rigorous, evidence-to-action demonstration project to understand how frontline and supervisory decision-makers in these two types of “community-facing” agencies learn, adopt,and implement evidence-based practices (EBPs), following an implementation science framework derived from the National Implementation Research Network. This involves a cluster randomized controlled trial with three conditions involving varying levels of coaching; surveys, interviews, and focus groups to understand how staff and clients respond to different approaches; and a cost assessment to determine varying financial burden of each condition. The evaluation team consists of staff from the Urban Institute who will be working closely with the APPA, NCVC, and a 5-member Community Advisory Board (CAB) compose of people with lived experience in probation and parole, victim services, and/or community violence. CA/NCF