Improve Justice-Involved Lives
Supporting the health, well-being, and successful rehabilitation of justice-involved individuals is central to effective correctional systems. By addressing individual needs throughout incarceration and at reentry, RIDOC works to improve outcomes, reduce recidivism and contribute to safer communities.
RIDOC advances this mission by enhancing medical and mental health services, fostering pro-social behaviors, expanding education and workforce development opportunities, and strengthening partnerships with community organizations to promote successful transitions back into the community. Through the use of evidence-based practices and data-informed decision-making, the Department continuously improves programs and services that reduce recidivism and create pathways to long-term success.
4a1 - Implement a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to working with justice-involved individuals by fully integrating Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) principles and Core Correctional Practices (CCP) into all direct services. This includes increasing individualized interventions to align with the Responsivity Principle, promoting consistent prosocial modeling by uniform staff, and providing ongoing evidence-based training to all personnel engaged in direct services.
4a3 - Identify policies and procedures that limit the implementation of best practices.
4a5 - Offer a wide range of mental health interventions and programs to the incarcerated population. Create structured continuity of care plans to include mental health, substance use disorders, and physical health providers.
4a6 - Increase trauma-informed care across all facilities with a focus on the awaiting trial population.
4a7 - Identify training opportunities for behavioral health staff to increase access to innovative clinical interventions that can be utilized effectively in a correctional setting.
4a8 - Increase program access for individuals serving long sentences.
4a9 - Increase participation in the Adult Basic Education (ABE) and General Educational Development (GED) programs.
4a10 - Create and implement sanctions/incentives for use in probation and parole.
4a11 - Continuously explore incarcerated individual tablet features and capabilities to enhance rehabilitative objectives and further digital equity.
4a12 - Assess housing unit configurations to aid in education and programming objectives.
4b1 - Actively foster positive relationships with our stakeholders and community partners as coordinated and collaborative relationships between corrections and community-based providers is essential.
4b2 - Engage in open communication with community partners employing, multiple avenues of contact regarding our shared goals and values.
4b3 - Engage in proactive and responsive media relation to enhance the public’s perception of the agency.
4b4 - Continue to work with the court system and state agencies to promote effective continuation of care for justice-involved individuals. COMPLETED
4b6 - Survey the literature and identify those practices that RIDOC and community providers can share.
4b7 - Identify training topics and internal and external trainers who can be used to strengthen evidence-based practices across RIDOC staff and community partners, to create reciprocal training protocol(s). COMPLETED
4b8 - Increase inter-agency data sharing for better reentry outcomes. Improve coordination of reentry and transition services for supervised individuals.
4b9 - Use data-informed policy decisions that help systems-level change.
4b10 - Increase the number and utilization of formal agreements with community-based organizations and governmental agencies. Create a centralized location of formal agreements. COMPLETED
4b11 - Continue working collaboratively with external stakeholders on sentencing reform. COMPLETED
4b12 - Facilitate incarcerated individuals' voter registration. COMPLETED
4b13 - Evaluate internal and external programs’ overall effectiveness.
4b14 - Open and operate a RIDOC Reentry and Welcome Center.
4c1 - Explore a consistent, longitudinal, evidence-based case management system that tracks incarcerated persons progress from intake to sentenced facility to transitional services and to probation and parole.
4c2 - Establish a documentation system that is accessible to all providers working in direct service to the justice-involved population.
4c4 - Increase the level of incarcerated persons supervised by direct service providers, in areas such as Correctional Industries.
4c6 - Provide a "sharing assessment results" training to counselors, probation and parole officers, and transitional service staff. Coordinate and facilitate offender assessment training(s) and sharing assessment results training(s) to relevant stakeholders on both offender and program assessments.
4c7 - Encourage increased collaboration between RIDOC staff and program providers to allow increased focus on case plan goals.
4c8 - Incorporate approved recommendations of the Recidivism Reduction Task Force (RRTF) identified herein and/ or enumerated in their implementation plan. Rely on RRTF to assist and guide units with implementation responsibility. COMPLETED
4c9 - Increase the use of non-confinement sanction options for community violations.
4c10 - Create an Evidence-Based Training Unit. COMPLETED
4d1 - Evaluate best practices/strategies for developing employment opportunities for justice-involved individuals. COMPLETED
4d2 - Increase successful reentry through increased technical skills training and real-world experiences to better prepare justice-involved individuals to interact with potential outside employers.
4d3 - Increase alignment between RIDOC workforce development programs and community vocational needs and evolving industries.
4d4 - Increase collaboration with academia, trade schools, labor organizations, and state employment-related agencies to aid in skill development, training, job placement, equipment procurement, etc.
4d5 - Maximize the operational capabilities, efficiencies, and production of Correctional Industries.
4e1 - Perform a gap analysis and create a plan for ongoing formal quality improvement initiatives to ensure timeliness and adequacy of care.
4e2 - Develop a standardized withdrawal management program, including parameters for referral, assessment, and monitoring to help measure risk and symptoms.
4e3 - Increase the proportion of MAT participants who also engage in behavioral health programming, as clinically indicated, (i.e., counseling, group therapy, cognitive-behavioral interventions, etc.) which are vital components of a comprehensive approach to addiction treatment.
4e4 - Create a standardized behavioral health intake screening and evaluation process to aid in clinical decision-making. COMPLETED
4e5 - Evaluate the feasibility of adopting a mental health classification system that more clearly aligns with the intervention and follow-up frequency needs of patients.