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CEC Research Department Submits Article for Publication

Roseland, NJ, May 24 -

The article “Academic Psychology and Corrections: The Utility of Partnerships” was co-authored by CEC affiliate Dr. Kirk Heilburn and was recently submitted for publication. The article details the mutual benefits to partnerships between correctional professionals/agencies and research psychology.


Academic Psychology and Corrections: The Utility of Partnerships

Authored by:
Kirk Heilbrun
Jacey Erickson
Drexel University and Villanova School of Law

The assessment and rehabilitation of criminal offending are at the heart of the corrections field. During the last two decades, these areas have increasingly been the focus of research and professional attention in the field of psychology as well. The development of specialty areas within applied psychology such as correctional psychology and forensic psychology offer clear evidence that the field of psychology has taken a serious interest in corrections, and can offer important contributions. The classification of risk for violent and general offending (Andrews & Bonta, 1995; Webster, Douglas, Eaves & Hart, 1997; Quinsey, Harris, Rice & Cormier, 2006), the assessment of criminogenic needs and their potential for guiding rehabilitative interventions (Andrews & Bonta, 1995), and the assessment of psychopathy and its relationship to reoffense risk (Hare, Clarke, Grann, & Thornton, 2000; Harris, Rice & Cormier, 1991; Tengstrom, Grann, Langstrom & Kullgren, 2000) are among the most important of these contributions. These specialized tools provide a more structured and accurate way to assess inmates’ criminogenic needs, and offer the opportunity to map the broader pattern of such needs in planning interventions and making decisions regarding release.

This article will discuss a process by which academic, research-oriented psychologists can seek out (or be sought by) correctional professionals and agencies to establish partnerships that will enhance the quality of services delivered in a correctional setting. The focus will be on the mutual benefits to the partnerships between correctional professionals/agencies, and research psychology (the latter as distinct from academic psychiatry or psychologists or psychiatrists in professional practice who function as consultants, contract employees, or full-time employees in correctional settings ). In the course of this discussion, we will describe the nature of these specific contributions, address the advantages to both universities and correctional agencies of such a partnership, and discuss a model for successfully implementing such a partnership.

The Importance of Empirical Research in Correctional Services

There is increasing value assigned to empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of interventions in human services today. Correctional service providers need to be accountable, providing assessment and interventions that accomplish what is intended and make effective use of existing resources. There are three particular domains in which empirical behavioral science research can contribute to this mission:

• Development and validation of psychological tests and specialized tools – psychological tests and structured inventories that provide information about personality, intellectual functioning, academic skills, interpersonal strengths, substance abuse, criminal thinking, and other dimensions relevant to reoffense risk offer promise for assessing risk-relevant strengths and needs—and providing the opportunity to offer interventions targeted specifically to such deficits.

• Delivery and evaluation of empirically-validated interventions – there is substantial interest in the design, delivery, and evaluation of rehabilitative services that will reduce reoffense risk in a cost-effective way. While specific interventions (e.g., substance abuse rehabilitation) may be studied, it is more likely that a systematic combination of relevant interventions will be more effective in reducing reoffense risk. Correctional agencies, in partnership with research psychologists, are in an excellent position to track and measure the effectiveness of rehabilitative interventions that have been delivered.

• Accuracy of decision-making with respect to important decisions – the decision-making of correctional agencies can be tracked on a variety of dimensions, including classification, the nature and length of disciplinary actions, transfer between institutions, and release on parole, including the site and the conditions. Such tracking may require the involvement of corrections, parole, and the research consultant. But the systematic monitoring of decision characteristics (predictors) and subsequent adjustment (outcome) allows agencies to more precisely gauge the relative importance of different predictive variables in relation to outcome. By increasing the structure involved in many decisions made in correctional contexts, there is less need to rely on unstructured human judgment. As a result of the less frequent use of such unstructured human judgment in correctional decision-making, it is axiomatic that the overall accuracy of decision-making will improve (Dawes, Faust & Meehl, 1989).

Academic-University Partnerships: Needs and Precedents

Such partnerships also offer substantial value to university-based research psychologists. Universities today place a high priority on extramural funding—grants and contracts with an agency external to the university help researchers conduct studies that are more detailed and thorough than those conducted without such extramural funding. Such funding is not only valuable to researchers, however. Extramural funding adds to a university’s “research portfolio,” enhancing the prestige of the university and helping them to fund other research-relevant goals using the “indirect costs” associated with the grant or contract.

There are four other ways in which corrections-research psychology partnerships, funded through extramural contracts, are quite valuable to universities. First, research opportunities created by these partnerships can provide both valuable supervised experience and funding for graduate students in exchange for their contributions on the project. Second, faculty members on 9-month contracts often associated with universities may look to enhance their own income through “summer salary” that can be a part of such a contract. Third, correctional personnel with an interest in teaching, supervising students, or university affiliation may negotiate such an arrangement as part of the partnership, providing universities with instructors and supervisors who are highly experienced in the field. Finally, such a contract allows the correctional agency or company to become familiar with the capabilities of students assisting with the project, which may create value for both the university and the agency by providing a source of potential employees with relevant experience that have been “vetted” by agency staff.

There are a variety of precedents for such a partnership. Many appear in Canada, where historically there has been a closer relationship between universities and correctional systems than in the U.S. However, there is a good example of a university-state partnership to be seen in Oregon over the last three decades, with the implementation of conditional release for persons committed by the courts as not guilty by reason of insanity. Researchers associated with the University of Oregon Health Sciences center have conducted a variety of studies that have helped the Psychiatric Security Review Board to better track outcomes and more accurately decide questions related to conditional release. (Bigelow, Bloom, Williams & McFarland, 1999; Schaefer & Bloom, 2005)

The Partnership Between Academic Psychology and Corrections: A Prototypical Model

In this section, we will describe a prototypical model for a partnership between academic psychology and corrections. In particular, we will discuss how this partnership can work when the “academic psychology” unit is a university department of psychology with one or two faculty members interested in research on assessment and rehabilitation in correctional settings, and when the department has a doctoral training program in clinical psychology with a specialty concentration in forensic psychology. The “correctional agency” in this model will be a private correctional company that provides community-based classification, assessment, and rehabilitative interventions. With some modification, however, this model could work reasonably well with other academic units and other corrections agencies.
There are five major domains of service that can be provided under such a partnership. They include:

• Consultation – the broadest domain, encompassing everything from a very focused request concerning the scientific literature or a particular aspect of practice to a much more labor-intensive review of some aspect of the company’s practice or planning in light of national or international scientific trends. This presumes a good working relationship between the project director on the academic side and the company’s partnership director that allows some requests to be reframed in light of the needs of the company or the nature of the evidence available in the scientific literature.

• Program Development – a company wishing to expand the scope of its services through the development of new programs, or the modification of existing programs, is well-advised to take steps to determine the consistency of such program development or modification with scientific evidence and professional standards. When a corrections company is privately-run, this priority is even higher—the company may be competing with public agencies or with other private companies to determine who will provide services to a particular cohort of individuals involved in the correctional system.

• Program Evaluation – when programs have been developed and implemented, they should still be evaluated for effectiveness. To what extent is the program achieving its expressed goals, both around the time of the delivery of services (when such goals would involve delivering services to individuals who attend, pay attention, retain some of the increased knowledge or improved skills that are being imparted, and have such services positively affect their behavior while in custody) and during a reasonable follow-up period (in which outcome goals would involve respecting the conditions of parole or probation, obeying the law, and behaving consistently with intermediate-range goals involving education, employment, involvement in ongoing needed services, and the like)? Formal program evaluation provides a company with a feedback loop for adjusting their course, promoting maximal efficiency and effectiveness.

• Scientific Research – correctional agencies are vital partners in formal scientific research that seeks to advance knowledge that is generalizable beyond a single agency or jurisdiction. Studies that involve multiple sites can also seek grant funding to defray the cost of the intensive and laborious research process. Correctional agencies may be understandably more focused on the goals of running a single company or system than on scientific research, but this is an area in which the multiple domains of such partnerships may overlap. Program evaluation is a specific kind of research, but the process of conducting an evaluation study overlaps to some extent with the process doing a formal scientific study. In addition, the development of scientifically-supported forms of assessment and rehabilitation in correctional contexts may have commercial as well as scientific value. However, the credibility of research findings may be greater when such research is conducted by investigators outside the correctional agency or company.

• Traineeships – doctoral programs are constantly seeking to provide their trainees with supervised experience that allows them to build skills in assessment, treatment, and research. Correctional agencies and companies are well-suited to provide such experience as part of these partnerships. The actual cost of their “labor” is modest, although individuals on traineeships need more supervision than conventional company employees. Some universities already provide substantial traineeships to their graduate students, further reducing the costs to correctional agencies. When such training is in a specialized area like corrections, it is likely to be even more valuable to an individual seeking to obtain a doctoral degree in psychology with a sub-specialization. The company may also benefit from the influx of energy and motivation that typically accompanies doctoral training. To the extent that a company may also seek to employ its former trainees, this cohort of individuals may serve as a good source of potential hires when they have completed their training.

A partnership with a university may also bring with it various contributions that are easier for an academic psychology department to provide than a corrections company or agency. For example, computer hardware accompanied by software for the statistical analysis of data in a way that is specialized and appropriate to correctional research could be one contribution. Another might involve the electronic file storage of date. A third another important contribution involves the submissions of research proposals to an Institutional Review Board (IRB), a body that is responsible for reviewing and approving research conducted with human participants and is a part of every research university. Correctional research that has not been reviewed and approved by an IRB creates potential liability for a company in the event that a participant is adversely affected by the research.

The scope and cost of such partnerships are flexible. Some agencies or companies may have limited resources to devote to consultation, program development, program evaluation, and scientific research. One approach to involvement in academic-correctional partnerships is to treat them as investments, paying careful attention to the trade-off between costs and returns. A small commitment to high priority areas over a limited period of time, discussed in greater detail in the next paragraph, should suffice to allow a company with limited resources to determine whether further investment is indicated.

Both academic units and correctional companies may be reluctant to commit to a multi-year partnership without the opportunity to observe the costs and benefits during a trial year. Indeed, one-year contracts may remain the choice of many partners. This kind of formal partnership does provide a contractual arrangement that can be managed by a university’s office of sponsored projects, taking the burden of the contract’s financial accounting off the university faculty member(s) involved in the partnership. However, one-year contracts also offer maximal flexibility for both the agency and the university. When the priorities of either change significantly, this can be reflected in the yearly negotiation of contractual terms. If a company were to experience a period of financial difficulties necessitating budgetary change, they would not be overly encumbered by a single year contract. If a faculty partner were to encounter a substantial increase in the demands on his/her time, the one-year contract would likewise facilitate flexibility in that partner’s involvement. When the contract described a partnership that worked reasonably smoothly, the annual contract negotiation process would nevertheless offer regular opportunities to review goals, priorities, and services—and is thus an effective management tool for both partners.

The size of the contract should depend on the desired services, but there are several particular considerations. A formal relationship with a university typically involves contractual overhead costs (“indirect costs”) that may range from 20% – 70% of the contractual direct service costs. These rates are usually higher for services delivered on the university campus, and they are often higher for federal grants than for the type of contracts described in this section. Trainee stipends are often relatively modest (for example, $7,000 - $10,000 for 14-20 hours weekly), although there are staff time costs associated with having trainees as well. Faculty time may be calculated for various purposes; two of the more common are providing additional income (what universities often call “extra compensation” or “summer salary” when faculty members are on 9-month contracts) or offsetting a percentage of the faculty member’s time that must be returned to the university under some contracts (often seen in medical schools).

Conclusion

Partnerships between universities and correctional agencies have numerous mutual advantages. These include the improved measurement of correctional service delivery and effectiveness, a better “real world” view of corrections for university researchers and graduate trainees, enhanced training opportunities for doctoral students leading to expanded hiring prospects for companies, improved ecological validity in research, and improved national and international exposure for corrections systems through conference presentations and publications. In this article, we have described how such partnerships might operate, and offered a model under which some of the priorities and contractual details might be considered. Committing resources efficiently to produce better correctional services is certainly a goal that can be facilitated through academic-corrections partnerships.


References
Andrews, D., & Bonta, J. (1995). Level of Service Inventory-Revised. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems.

Bigelow, Bloom, Williams, & McFarland (1999). An administrative model for close monitoring and managing high risk individuals. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 17, 227-35.

Dawes, R., Faust, D., & Meehl, P. (1989). Clinical versus actuarial judgment. Science, 243, 1668-1674.

Hare, R. D., Clarke, D., Grann, M., & Thornton, D. (2000). Psychopathy and the predictive validity of the PCL-R: An international perspective. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 188, 623-645.

Harris, G.T., Rice, M.E., & Cormier, C.A. (1991). Psychopathy and violent recidivism. Law and Human Behavior, 15, 625 637.

Quinsey, V., Harris, G., Rice, M., & Cormier, C. (2006). Violent offenders: Appraising and managing risk (second edition). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Schaefer, M., & Bloom, J. (2005). The use of the insanity defense as a jail diversion mechanism for mentally ill persons charged with misdemeanors. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, 33, 79-84.

Tengstrom, A., Grann, M., Langstrom, N., & Kullgren, G. (2000). Psychopathy (PCL-R) as a predictor of violent recidivism among criminal offenders with schizophrenia. Law and Human Behavior, 24, 45-58.

Webster, C., Douglas, K., Eaves, D., & Hart, S. (1997). HCR-20 : Assessing risk for violence (Version 2). Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada: Mental Health, Law, and Policy Institute, Simon Fraser University.