Development of Evidence-Based Viral Pandemic Guidelines for Community Corrections

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, community supervision agencies (i.e., pretrial, probation and/or parole) adapted practices to address public safety goals for supervising individuals in the community and for reducing the spread of COVID-19. Community supervision agencies had to drastically adapt policies to manage social distancing during supervision contacts and provide assistance to individuals to achieve supervision goals. One of the greatest challenges during the pandemic was the lack of clear and consistent guidelines for supervision agencies to use. This project combines research-based findings about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on community supervision agencies, experiences of clients, and supervision officers during the pandemic. These findings along with feedback from a panel of experts from a variety of fields will be used to achieve two primary goals: 1) development of a comprehensive evidence-based understanding of the response to and impact of COVID-19 on the field of community supervision; and 2) application of the collected evidence to develop empirically-supported pandemic response guidelines for supervision agencies. The value of this effort is to systematically learn from the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for future pandemics. Collectively, these efforts will improve both knowledge and practice by contributing to developing a knowledgebase of empirical evidence and a toolkit for practitioners and agencies to use in the future. This study is informed by three main research questions: 1) What responses during COVID-19 were successful and unsuccessful in community supervision agencies? 2) What are the short and long-term impacts of how supervision agencies responded during COVID-19?; and 3) What are the better strategies to implement in response to future pandemics or emergency situations? We will use a multi-staged approach involving research evaluation of responses and impact of responses in three jurisdictions and collaboration with experts across relevant fields to inform two key deliverables. These deliverables include a database of successful practices and policies for the field and Practice Guidelines for the Community Corrections Responses to Viral Pandemics. This project has the potential to expand what has already been done on the COVID-19 pandemic in the field of supervision through a comprehensive consensus building process using the RAND/UCLA model. This will identify adaptations to community supervision practice and the impact of those adaptations for agencies, supervision officers, and individuals under supervision. This project includes multiple perspectives and examines the impact of pandemic responses on key outcomes to advance knowledge, inform evidence-based tools for the community supervision field, and identify areas for possible reform.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.