As jail depopulation continues to move inmates into community corrections programs, the demand has increased for these departments to effectively manage more clients with the same resources. Officers need smarter tools to navigate larger workloads and give clients the best opportunity to succeed in order to deliver on the promise that core corrections practices can impact recidivism.
As community supervision becomes modernized to fit today’s digital climate, probation and parole departments are relying on software and mobile apps to not only streamline client supervision but overcome challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic. SCRAM TouchPoint® now has a way to integrate video chat functionality to help community corrections departments communicate with clients face-to-face, safely and effectively.
The Columbia County Probation Department supervises justice-involved individuals through drug and alcohol testing, referring them for counseling and treatment, and maintaining a close view of how well clients are complying with court-ordered probation. This mission, combined with the intrinsic challenges faced by members of the community, is what led the department to implement the latest technology to successfully accomplish the task.
Modern-day community supervision faces constant challenges—budget constraints, increasing officer responsibility, growing caseloads, and more. New technology is helping combat these challenges to make officers’ day-to-day tasks easier and more efficient and help probation and parole departments effectively integrate evidence-based practices (EBP) into existing policies and procedures to help clients succeed.
Alcohol use has been prevalent throughout history and that continues to be true today. Unfortunately, the adverse effects of alcohol use and abuse are well-known. The need for accurate and reliable methods to identify traces of alcohol in the body has led to the development of many technologies—each with its own features, benefits, and limitations.
For sexual assault or domestic violence victims, knowing their abuser is being tracked with a GPS bracelet may not be enough. Working in conjunction with SCRAM GPS, the new SCRAM Ally Victim Notification app alerts the victim and supervising authorities when a GPS client is in proximity to the victim’s phone, for added peace of mind.
With paper invoices, manual bookkeeping, and keeping records up-to-date, client billing and collections is often a time consuming and cumbersome process. But through the SCRAM Systems and AllPaid partnership, supervision agencies can easily generate invoice notifications using SCRAM TouchPoint’s Text-to-All feature—saving officers time while increasing collections.
Community corrections agencies gather a considerable amount of information on their clients and the services that they provide, but rarely is that information cultivated to evaluate program effectiveness. With so much data, corrections departments struggle to identify and implement changes to program models. SCRAM Nexus’ powerful analytics give officers the information they need to make data-driven decisions that increase program and client success.
With stay-at-home and safety orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, the reliance and need for technology in community corrections has never been higher. The SCRAM TouchPoint® Client Engagement Mobile app’s document management feature provides a safe and secure way for clients and officers to digitally send and receive important paperwork, removing the need for in-person contact.
Communication between corrections officers and their clients is largely manual, oftentimes with minimal or no record of the interactions. Officers generally spend 60% of their time on administrative tasks and only 40% on client engagement, creating unbalanced responsibilities and workflow inefficiency. But when SCRAM TouchPoint® is integrated with SCRAM Nexus®, officers can communicate with their clients like never before.