Corrections in Canada are divided into two separate systems: the federal correctional system and the provincial/territorial correctional systems as outlined by the Criminal Code of Canada. Adults (age 18 and older) who are sentenced to custodial terms of two years or greater are under the responsibility of the federal system. Correctional Services Canada administers federal sentences, including any community supervision. For adults in the federal system, community supervision is almost always a part of their sentence. These individuals may be granted parole by the Parole Board of Canada after having served one-third of their custodial sentence or, on Statutory Release; a presumptive release after serving two-thirds of their custodial sentence. For adults who are sentenced to custodial terms of less than two years, periods of probation, and other types of sentences, the correctional systems of the province or territory are responsible for administering these sentences. The provinces and territories are also responsible for all justice-involved youth (aged 13–17), governed by Youth Criminal Justice Act, a federal statue. Adults involved in provincial and territorial corrections are governed by the Criminal Code of Canada and the Prisons and Reformatory Act. Community supervision in Canada, regardless of whether it is federal, provincial, or territorial, is more similar than different, with the greatest differences noted between the federal system and the provincial/territorial systems. Virtually all of Canada's correctional system have been influenced by the Risk-Need-Responsivity model, routinely use risk-needs assessments and community supervision focusses on addressing criminogenic needs and typically employ community agencies to provide treatment and other rehabilitative services. The special case of "change agent" community corrections in British Columbia, one Canadian province, is described as it has successfully implemented and integrated a variety of evidence-based practices.

Implementation of risk-need-responsivity principles in probation has fostered the development of programs that train probation officers (POs) to directly address clients’ criminogenic needs during office visits. This study examined changes in PO office visit behavior and changes in caseload recidivism rates, following participation in the Forensic Cognitive-Behavioral Techniques (CB t) training program. Training was delivered to 39 POs over 10 sessions. PO behavior and skills were assessed using pre- and posttraining audio-recorded office visits. Coders blind to the pre/post nature of the recordings rated them on multiple variables across three domains: (1) Use of CB t, (2) Office Visit Content, and (3) Communication/Relationship Building skills. At posttraining, POs demonstrated increased use of CB t, greater focus on criminogenic needs, and improved communication skills. Overall, caseload recidivism rates declined posttraining. Despite challenges, training programs like Forensic CB t are associated with more skilled interactions during office visits and reductions in recidivism.

Despite increasing evidence regarding the efficacy of risk assessment and intervention in community supervision, there continues to be relatively weak adherence to such evidence in its application to decision-making. Regarding assessment, such a lack of fidelity purportedly leads to higher rates of overrides, degraded accuracy, and inefficiency in resource allocation. Regarding intervention, failure to implement evidence-based practice and recognize the role of probation officers as agents of change further diminishes supervision effectiveness. With probation populations at an all-time high and a burgeoning violation rate, this chapter summarizes the emerging probation research to situate the need for clarity of purpose and improved decision-making to maintain public confidence in probation. The chapter presents a decision framework utilizing empirically informed domains as a logic model to ensure probation officer decisions are fair, transparent, and defensible. This framework incorporates both static and dynamic information to ensure decisions are accurate and contextual.

CHANGES training1 is currently being implemented in France as part of an initiative with two probation departments, initiated by the Ecole Nationale d’Administration Pénitentiaire (ENAP). This is the first attempt to provide officers with an evidence-based cognitive-behavioral strategy for supervising justice-involved individuals on a face-to-face basis. The implementation of the CHANGES program will be discussed, including from the perspective of trainers and probation officers. The levers and barriers to implementing such strategies will be discussed, as well as a venues for improvements following this small-scale initiative.

The effective use of the core treatment principles from the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model has the potential to reduce criminal recidivism significantly. A pilot trial of the RNR-based model Krimstics in the Swedish probation service showed increased RNR adherence but no effects on recidivism. The subsequent implementation of Krimstics involved the training and clinical support of more than 700 probation officers working with community supervision. In parallel, an implementation evaluation examining RNR adherence was undertaken, collecting and coding audio-recorded supervision sessions and case file data. Findings showed that Krimstics-trained probation officers ( N = 96) used cognitive behavioral therapy-based techniques in supervision sessions while demonstrating moderate-to-high levels of relationship building skills. However, adherence to the risk principle was lacking and key cognitive behavioral techniques showed poor quality. Although Krimstics has increased RNR adherence in a Swedish context, challenges with implementing theory into practice may obscure the assessment of the service’s effectiveness.

Purpose: To evaluate the province-wide implementation of the Strategic Training Initiative in Community Su-pervision (STICS) in British Columbia, Canada. Methods: Probation officers (PO) audio recorded a sample of their supervision sessions with probationers prior to and after receiving STICS training. Training involved teaching POs to apply cognitive-behavioral interventions to address the criminogenic needs of their clients. Both the general and violent recidivism rates of probationers were measured using a national criminal history database. Recidivism was defined as a new conviction. Results: After training, audio recordings showed clear improvements in the content of discussions and the intervention techniques used by POs. Compared to a random sample of probationers supervised prior to STICS training, clients of STICS-trained POs had significantly lower 2-year general recidivism rates (43.0% vs. 61.4%; OR = 0.48, 95% CI [0.37, 0.611) and violent recidivism rates (14.9% vs. 21.2%; OR = 0.65, 95% CI [0.48, 0.891). Conclusions: Training POs in how to address criminogenic needs using cognitive-behavioral interventions was associated with significant reductions in client recidivism. This project demonstrated that a community cor-rections agency can benefit from an evidence-based approach to supervision.

Research examining the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in reducing recidivism has paid little attention to treatment factors contributing to response variability. Using an archival sample of 448 participants exposed to a risk-need-responsivity (RNR)-informed CBT program or no treatment, a multigroup latent profile analysis yielded a four-profile solution: a treatment-nonresponsive group and three treatment-responsive groups. Among the treatment-responsive profiles, reduced criminal attitudes were most predictive of desistance from reoffending. Elevated rates of recidivism and negligible gains following treatment were associated with pretreatment elevations in antisocial traits, risk level, and negative attitudes toward treatment. These findings underscore a greater need for individualized assessment of risk and treatment motivation, the importance of altering criminal sentiments to prevent reentry into the system upon release, and challenge the idea that 200 hours of treatment is sufficient for lasting change. Study limitations and further directions are discussed, including the need for correctional treatment outcome research to better isolate individual differences.

This study was an attempt to replicate the findings from an earlier experimental evaluation of a probation officer training program by Bonta et al. (Criminal Justice and Behavior, 38: 1127–1148, 2011). An experimental design was used with an improvement in the random assignment of clients and was tested with a sample of probation officers from a new jurisdiction. Probation officers from the Canadian province of Alberta were randomly assigned to training or probation-as-usual. Officer behavior was measured by audio recordings of supervision sessions and recidivism was defined as a new conviction within 2 years of the initial recording. Attrition resulted in 27 probation officers submitting audio recordings of supervision sessions over a 6-month period (15 in the experimental group and 12 in the control). There were 160 recordings of 81 probationers submitted. The audio recordings showed inconsistent changes in officer behavior and no differences in recidivism between the clients of the experimental and control probation officers. However, the use of cognitive techniques by the probation officers was associated with a longer time to recidivism. In addition, by 10 months, more than half of the trained officers stopped their involvement in ongoing professional development activities. Although the study failed to replicate the major findings reported by Bonta et al., it did highlight the importance of cognitive techniques in officer training. The results are interpreted with respect to the replication literature and the difficulties inherent in direct and conceptual replications especially in real-world settings.

The Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) Model of offender assessment and rehabilitation is one of the mostly widely used paradigms for the design and delivery of offender treatment programs. However, there has been relatively little research on providing RNR-informed services by front-line correctional staff. The Strategic Training Initiative in Community Corrections (STICS) is the first RNR-based intervention that trains probation officers to use the RNR principles in the everyday supervision of offenders. This chapter describes the development, evaluation, and application of STICS in community supervision. Special attention is given to issues faced during large-scale implementation of the STICS model and the generalizability of the model. The chapter ends with a description of the influence of STICS on international developments in providing evidence-based community supervision.

The dominant Canadian approach to offender rehabilitation, the risk-need-responsivity (RNR) model, requires assessing offenders' likelihood of recidivism and their criminogenic needs (i.e., risk/need assessments). The current study examines the risk/need assessments routinely used in Canadian corrections and compares their risk category labels. All Canadian jurisdictions used a risk/need tool for general recidivism, most used sex-crime-specific tools, and a few used tools specific to intimate partner violence. There was, however, considerable diversity in the names, number, and meaning of the risk category labels, which could result in different responses to the same individual based solely on the version of the risk tool used in any specific jurisdiction. Our results suggest that increased attention to the meaning of risk category labels could facilitate offenders receiving the most appropriate and fair correctional responses.

THE RISK-NEED-RESPONSIVITY (RNR) model has arguably become the premier model of offender assessment and rehabilitation (Cullen, 2012; Ogloff & Davis, 2004; Polaschek, 2012). The RNR model made its published debut in 1990 (Andrews, Bonta, & Hoge, 1990), with the first empirical test of the principles published a few months later (Andrews, Zinger, Hoge, Bonta, Gendreau, & Cullen, 1990). In the Andrews, Bonta and Hoge paper, four principles were presented with respect to offender treatment. The first three principles dealt with the who, what, and how of offender rehabilitation. The risk principle stated that the intensity of treatment should be matched to the risk level of the offender, with the greatest amount of treatment services being directed to the higher-risk offender. The need principle dictated that treatment goals should be the criminogenic needs that are functionally related to criminal behavior. The responsivity principle directed service providers to use cognitive-behavioral techniques to bring about change while being attentive to individual factors such as personality, gender, and motivation. The fourth principle was the override principle, which called for professional discretion in cases where behavior could not be explained with existing knowledge. Since 1990 the RNR model has expanded to include many more principles (Andrews & Bonta, 2010a; 2010b), but the principles of risk, need, and responsivity remain at the core. Most of the research has focused on the risk and need principles, while the research on the responsivity principle has been a poor cousin. There are many reasons for this situation, two of which are the ease of conducting research on risk and need compared to responsivity and the vagueness of the original conceptualization of responsivity by Andrews, Bonta, and Hoge (1990). In this paper, we attempt to improve our understanding of the responsivity principle and provide suggestions to furthering research on responsivity. First, however, we summarize the impact of the RNR model on correctional practice. Next, we trace the history of the RNR model with special emphasis on the responsivity principle. Following this discussion, we review how the responsivity principle has come to mean simply a consideration of client characteristics in the absence of the environment where the work takes place, such as therapist/helper characteristics and skills. We then end the article with a discussion of how we can forward a constructive research agenda on the responsivity principle.

Domestic violence courts (DVCs) have become an increasingly popular model in the problem-solving court system. To date, there have been no efforts to summarize the extant literature regarding the impact of DVCs on recidivism. The present study is a meta-analysis of 20 DVC outcome studies reporting on 26 unique DVC samples. The results indicated that DVCs are having a positive impact (i.e., lower odds) on general recidivism (odds ratio [OR] = .81, 95% CI [0.68, 0.98], k = 18) as well as domestic violence recidivism (OR = .81, 95% CI [0.67, 0.97], k = 21), compared to domestic violence offenders processed through the traditional court system. These results, however, became nonsignificant when considering studies of sound methodological quality (as assessed by the Collaborative Outcome Data Committee guidelines). The study also conducted a preliminary investigation of treatment quality (adherence to risk, need, and responsivity [RNR] principles) in the DVC literature. The results indicated that adherence to the RNR principles was low but significantly related to greater treatment effects. Future research should aim to increase the quality of evaluation designs and the courts should look to existing offender rehabilitation literature to inform best practices with domestic violence offenders.

In 2011, the Board of Directors of the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) launched the Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice of Psychological Treatments to support and guide practice as well as to inform stakeholders. This article describes the work of this task force, outlining its raison d'etre, providing a comprehensive definition of evidence-based practice (EBP), and advancing a hierarchy of evidence that is respectful of diverse research methodologies, palatable to different groups, and yet comprehensive and compelling. The primary objective was to present an overarching methodology or approach to thinking about EBP so that psychologists can provide and implement the best possible psychological treatments. To this end, our intention for this document was to provide a set of guidelines and standards that will foster interest, encourage development, and promote effectiveness in EBP.Keywords: evidence-based practice, evidence-based treatment, empirically supported treatment, psychotherapy, psychological treatmentAs part of the 2011-2012 Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) President's mandate (see Dozois, 2012, 2013), the Board of Directors voted in favor of a motion (March 2011) that the CPA establish a task force on the evidence-based practice (EBP) of psychological treatments that would generate a set of criteria and develop a position statement regarding the optimal integration of research evidence into practice. The board members believed that it was important for the CPA to develop a position on EBP in psychology to support and guide practice as well as to inform stakeholders. Psychological health and psychological disorders are clearly a priority for many of Canada's stakeholder groups (e.g., the Mental Health Commission of Canada, Treasury Board, Public Health Agency of Canada), and effective psychological treatment is also an important priority for CPA.BackgroundImportant objectives in professional psychology include the generation of treatment-relevant scientific knowledge and the ap- plication of this knowledge to the development of efficacious and effective interventions for mental and behavioral health problems (Baker, McFall, & Shoham, 2009; Kazdin, 2008; Lilienfeld, 2010; Treat, Bootzin, & Baker, 2012). Such objectives arise from a growing recognition in the field that the practice of psychological treatments should be based on valid evidence regarding which approaches to intervention are most likely to be successful. Al- though there is controversy regarding what constitutes "evidence," most psychologists believe in the utility of research for informing clinical practice and view EBP positively (Lilienfeld, Ritschel, Lynn, Cautin, & Latzman, 2013).In 1995, the American Psychological Association's (APA) So- ciety of Clinical Psychology Task Force on Promotion and Dis- semination of Psychological Procedures published its initial report, which listed treatments considered to be well-established or prob- ably efficacious according to a standard set of criteria (e.g., Chambless & Ollendick, 2001; Chambless et al., 1996). These criteria were subsequently adopted by the CPA Section on Clinical Psychology in their task force report, Empirically Supported Treat- ments in Psychology: Implications for Canadian Professional Psy- chology (Hunsley, Dobson, Johnston, & Mikail, 1999a, 1999b).Although many researchers and practitioners were enthusiastic about these efforts to promote empirically supported treatments, the criteria used to designate such treatments elicited considerable controversy. Concerns with the focus on empirically supported treatments have done little to narrow the gap between research and practice and to alter many clinicians' utilization of scientific liter- ature (see Hunsley, 2007a; Kazdin, 2008; Lilienfeld et al., 2013, for reviews of some of the challenges and solutions). For example, some psychologists have argued that the type of research deemed necessary to produce supportive evidence for a treatment is in- compatible with schools of psychotherapy outside of the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) framework (e. …

Across all types of psychotherapy, it has been shown that the therapeutic relationship or working alliance between the therapist and the client is considered one of the most important contributors to change, stronger than what type of intervention is used (Eames and Roth 2000; Horvath and Greenberg 1989, 1994; Mallinckrodt 2000; Martin et al. 2000). As a result, it is a generally accepted view that a positive relationship with the client is both necessary and sufficient to achieve the desired therapeutic outcomes (e.g. Eames and Roth 2000; Horvath and Greenberg 1989, 1994; Mallinckrodt 2000; Martin et al. 2000). However, it is not known whether or not this view of the critical importance of the relationship is valid within the context of community supervision, where the nature of the relationship and the 'work' being conducted is qualitatively different due to the coercive nature and power differential inherent in community supervision. Within the 'What Works' literature, both the relationship and intervention techniques are components of the Responsivity Principle. This principle is concerned with matching the style and mode of intervention to the abilities, motivation and learning style of the offender. Although the quality of the relationship is considered important, there is considerably more evidence supporting specific core correctional practices which outline the attributes, skills and intervention techniques (i.e. cognitive—behavioural techniques) exhibited by the criminal justice helping professional that are associated with enhanced criminal justice outcomes (Andrews and Bonta 2010).

Meta-analytic reviews of the offender rehabilitation literature have consistently demonstrated that treatment can reduce recidivism. The majority of the treatment programs in these reviews consist of small-scale demonstration projects (N < 100). Larger interventions, although effective in reducing recidivism, do not produce as robust effects as the smaller demonstration projects. The reasons for this may have to do more with quality implementation issues rather than with the treatment itself. This article describes the implementation plans for a previously validated probation officer training intervention that is being introduced across a large jurisdiction. The steps taken to ensure quality implementation are outlined and obstacles that arose are discussed.

The present study examines the General Responsivity Principle of the Risk–Need–Responsivity model of offender assessment and treatment which holds that employing cognitive social learning methods to influence the behavior of offenders is the most effective approach to reduce recidivism. In this study, the prevalence rates of probation officers discussing procriminal attitudes and their use of cognitive intervention strategies during one-on-one supervision sessions with their clients was assessed and the impact of these discussions and strategies on reoffending was examined. Audio-recorded supervision sessions from officers engaging in routine practice as well as from officers who were trained in the Strategic Training Initiative in Community Supervision (STICS) model were rated. Results indicated that without this training, officers infrequently (i.e., approximately 5% of the recorded sessions) discussed procriminal attitudes/cognitions and rarely used cognitive intervention techniques with their clients (i.e., approximately 1% of sessions). Officers who were STICS trained showed significant improvement in talking about attitudes and using cognitive intervention techniques (i.e., 39 and 42% of sessions, respectively). Cox regression survival analysis found the use of cognitive intervention techniques was significantly related to lower rates of reoffending. These findings support the General Responsivity Principle within the context of one-on-one community supervision.

The effectiveness of drug courts has been the subject of numerous studies, and three major meta-analyses have examined many of these studies in regard to two main factors: (1) study quality and (2) treatment quality. The current study examines these two factors more closely. Study quality was assessed using the Collaborative Outcome Data Committee Guidelines (CODC); studies were rated as “rejected,” “weak,” “good,” or “strong” based on methodological quality. Drug court treatment quality was assessed by evaluating adherence to the principles of Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR). The RNR principles have been previously shown to mediate the effectiveness of offender treatment across various offender groups and a variety of criminogenic needs. In total, 96 studies were reviewed and assessed according to study and treatment quality. Results found that the study quality of the literature is poor and that this accounts for much of the variability in findings seen across studies. Furthermore, analyses revealed that although adherence to the RNR principles was poor, increasing adherence to RNR resulted in more effective treatment of offenders and reduced recidivism. Using only methodologically acceptable studies, the least biased estimate of the effectiveness of drug courts in reducing recidivism was found to be approximately 8%.