Risk-need-responsivity: Evaluating need-to-service matching with reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, maintenance.

With a sample of 125 adults under community supervision (71.20% male, 76.00% White, mean age = 33.17 years), this study evaluated need-to-service matching using an evaluation framework from implementation science. Need-to-service matching is a case management strategy intended to align service referrals in case plans with justice-involved persons' criminogenic needs. The results indicated that need-to-service matching reached a high percentage of its target population at 81.70%. Within criminogenic need areas, good match frequencies ranged from 80.00% in family/marital problems to 98.29% in alcohol/drug problems. Clinical staff also met the adherence benchmark applied by the current study, which required a 75.00% match between individuals' criminogenic needs and the services they received. Justice-involved persons had, on average, 90.46% of their criminogenic needs matched with at least one service referral. Over-prescription of services (i.e., recommendation of services that were not needed) was high, with frequencies in need areas ranging from 60.98% in education/employment to 82.21% in antisocial patterns. Methods from implementation science are useful for structuring evaluations of need-to-service matching, understanding implementation success and failure, and generating recommendations for improving implementation practice. The field would benefit greatly from benchmarks for need-to-service matching evaluation elements.

Implementation of risk-need-responsivity principles into probation case planning.

OBJECTIVE: Research indicates moderate-to-limited integration of the risk-need-responsivity (RNR) principles in probation case planning. Efforts to improve implementation are important targets for research, policy, and practice. This study examined the ability of two juvenile probation departments to implement RNR principles with fidelity following a comprehensive implementation protocol that included RNR-related policies, creation of a service matrix for criminogenic need-to-service matching, and extensive staff training. HYPOTHESES: The researchers anticipated fidelity to the risk and need principles would be stronger than previous studies. METHOD: This implementation study involved secondary data analysis of services received over 10 months for 254 adolescent offenders (76.80% male, 72.40% White, M age = 16.13 years) from two probation departments following adoption of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory. RESULTS: Probation departments evidenced strong fidelity to the risk principle, such that higher risk youth were assigned more services with higher intensity. Fidelity to the need principle was moderate at best (an average 24.61% to 29.38% need-to-service match) and varied by criminogenic need, overall risk level, and the operational definition of criminogenic need. CONCLUSIONS: Comprehensive implementation practices are associated with strong fidelity to the risk principle, but it may take longer for probation departments to achieve strong fidelity to the need principle. Researchers should identify more feasible methods for implementing the need principle and strive for a consensus on methods for measuring need-to-service match that are also consistent with probation policies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).