The Priority Prolific Offender Program: Preliminary Findings from the Final Year of the Process and Outcomes Evaluation
Date
2017-07-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family.
Abstract
In response to a recommendation from Alberta’s Crime Reduction and Safe Communities Task Force, the Alberta Ministry of Justice and Solicitor General, in partnership with the Calgary Police Service, Edmonton Police Service and RCMP, developed and piloted the Priority Prolific Offender Program (PPOP) in 2008. The objectives of PPOP are to ensure Crown prosecutors have complete, accurate, and upto-date information on prolific offenders, promote rehabilitation through the provision of appropriate support services, and ensure the consequences of offending and reoffending are meaningful.
PPOP contracted the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family in 2012 to begin the first year of a three-year process and outcome evaluation involving multiple methodologies. The report from the first year of the process and outcome evaluation (MacRae-Krisa & Paetsch, 2013) used program data on offenders who had been deselected from the program, a survey of PPOP staff and a survey of PPOP stakeholders to re-examine program processes and, in particular, to provide a profile of the offenders in the program as a foundation for examining outcomes in the proposed second and third years of the evaluation.
Following an internal review of the program in 2013, PPOP contracted the Institute to conduct the second year of the evaluation, and findings were presented in Bertrand, Paetsch, MacRae-Krisa, & Boyd (2015). That report included a comparison of clients at the program sites in Calgary, Edmonton and the RCMP locations. It also focused on updating the profile of individuals in a retrospective sample who had been PPOP clients and were subsequently deselected, and conducting comparisons across program sites. Further, the report examined these clients’ reoffending behaviour during their time in the program and after leaving it using data obtained from the Justice Online Information Network (JOIN) to determine the longer-term efficacy of PPOP in reducing offending behaviour.
The results obtained when examining offending behaviour before, during and after the program for clients in the retrospective sample were extremely positive and strongly suggestive of the efficacy of PPOP in having a positive effect on individuals not only during their time in the program, but after deselection as well. Across all program locations, and for both substantive and administrative offences, the number of convictions during the program was substantially lower than in the five years prior to PPOP and, with the exception of substantive offences among EPS program clients, decreased even further or remained the same following deselection.
Given the positive findings with regard to reoffending behaviour during offenders’ time in PPOP and after deselection, one of the recommendations made in the second-year outcome evaluation report was to continue the evaluation for one final year to determine whether the reduced offending behaviour is maintained over a longer period. The second-year report also recommended that a final evaluation year should include another wave of staff and stakeholder surveys to examine any changes in knowledge and perceptions of the program over the intervening period. It was also recommended that a final evaluation year should include a Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis to examine the social value created by PPOP.
In 2016, PPOP contracted the Institute to conduct a final year of the evaluation of the program, and the current report presents the findings. It includes comparisons across program locations and provides analyses of program clients in both the retrospective and longitudinal samples. The report also discusses findings from the latest wave of staff and stakeholder surveys, and presents an SROI analysis of the program. The objectives of the report are to: (1) report findings from the retrospective longitudinal sample, including offending behaviour before, during and after the program; (2) report findings from the program entry and program exit forms for the longitudinal sample; (3) examine any differences in offender characteristics and program procedures across program locations; (4) analyze views of program staff and stakeholders, and examine any changes in opinions and knowledge of the program in the three years since the last surveys; (5) examine the social value created by PPOP by conducting a SROI analysis; and (6) make recommendations for the program as it moves forward.
Description
Keywords
family law, law
Citation
Paetsch, J.J., Bertrand, L.D., MacRae-Krisa, L.D. & Boyd, J.-P. E. (2013). The Priority Prolific Offender Program: Preliminary Findings from the Final Year of the Process and Outcomes Evaluation (rep.). Calgary, AB: Canadian Research Institutue for Law and the Family