In August, CSG Justice Center staff, along with expert consultant Dr. Sarah Desmarais, continued to work on socializing the guidelines. The project team also continued to work on finalizing the deliverables, including developing the website further as well as the self-assessment tool.
Throughout the month, the project team continuously met with internal CSG Justice Center colleagues, including the Communications team, to discuss project deliverable status and development.
CSG Justice Center staff shared the project promotional toolkit, updated social tiles, a draft of the press release, and the final version of the News and Analysis web post with BJA. A BJA policy advisor will connect with the BJA Communications team and follow up with next steps and dissemination plans; we anticipate a response in early September. CSG Justice Center staff also shared the draft APPA conference presentation with BJA and incorporated their feedback to finalize the presentation.
On August 29, the CSG Justice Center released a news and analysis post—"First-of-Their-Kind National Guidelines Fill Critical Gap to Advance Fairness and Transparency in Post-Conviction Risk and Needs Assessment”—to introduce the new National Guidelines for Post-Conviction Risk and Needs Assessment.
On August 30, BJA and the CSG Justice Center released all deliverables for the project, which included (1) webpages on BJA’s Public Safety Risk Assessment Clearinghouse (PSRAC) and the CSG Justice Center websites; (2) the Advancing Fairness and Transparency: National Guidelines for Post-Conviction Risk and Needs Assessment publication; (3) the executive summary; (4) the FAQ for Administrators; (5) the FAQ for Legislators; and (6) the Self-Assessment Tool.
The website creates an interactive environment for the new National Guidelines for Post-Conviction Risk and Needs Assessment resources and organizes the appropriate resources based on the intended audience. The guidelines and their associated resources were developed with a variety of audiences in mind. Legislators are uniquely positioned to ensure that the criminal justice agencies they fund are employing risk and needs assessment in a way that promotes accuracy, fairness, transparency, and effective communication and use. Administrators and other system leaders can use these guidelines to improve the risk and needs assessment process in their agencies. For practitioners who use risk and needs assessment on a day-to-day basis, these guidelines provide clarity, inform case planning, and promote buy-in from the people they assess. These guidelines equip researchers with the concrete steps needed to evaluate whether risk and needs assessment practices align with the principles of accuracy, fairness, transparency, and effective communication and use.
The website also houses the self-assessment tool, which is intended for agencies to assess the status of their post-conviction risk and needs assessment efforts in preparation for adopting the national guidelines. The assessment will require knowledge of the agency’s use of post-conviction risk and needs assessment instruments, organizational and system processes, and communication of assessment results.
On August 30, BJA and the CSG Justice Center also introduced the new resource in a workshop at the APPA Conference. The workshop introduced the National Guidelines for Post-Conviction Risk and Needs Assessment resources, explained the 13 guidelines, and discussed a process to implement the guidelines.
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