The current model of probation fails to meet individuals where they are in their lives. It fails to understand the initial challenges they were surviving and does not acknowledge how simply navigating the court system may have made their challenges worse. Once individuals are sentenced to community supervision, they must navigate the rules and obligations of probation often with even fewer resources than they had on the day they experienced their arrest. Probation departments point to their use of evidence-based practices (EBPs) as an indicator of their capacity to help those on community supervision, but fail to consider the context in which those practices are applied.

The Coaching(referee) Model for Change (CRMC) believes people have the capacity to change and enhance their lives but require more intentional support and time to do so. More importantly, it goes beyond simply enhancing the probation officer-individual relationship and demands probation agencies and their environment, structures, policies, and practices – the way of doing business – must be different, too.

The CRMC demands probation agencies critically interrogate themselves and consider how the physical environment of probation offices, the data systems and metrics, the infrastructure of policies, staff wellness, staff training performance measures, and rules of probation all contribute to individuals not successfully completing probation. The CRMC helps transform agencies from a punitive culture to an coaching organization with a growth mindset. In these transformed organizations, staff can more effectively use evidence-based practices and connect more authentically with people under supervision.

In partnership with the National Institute of Corrections, JSP worked with three jurisdictions: Michigan Department of Corrections, Kansas Department of Corrections, and Brazoria, TX County Probation Department to develop and pilot a tool to assess the degree an agency reflects the core components of a coaching organization. The tool, called the Organizational Coaching Assessment for Evidence-based Practices (OCA-EBP), evaluates an organization’s growth mindset across several domains. Once scored, the CRMC team provides each sites an overview of areas for improvement.

JSP now offers the OCA-EBP to organizations across the country to help them become coaching organizations. Based upon the findings of the assessment, JSP offers both a full transformative approach to redesigning the organization based on the Coaching(referee) Model for Change as well as smaller, more targeted trainings.