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

Area of Science:

• Implementation Science
• Criminal Justice
• Public Health

Background:

• Need-to-service matching is a case management strategy to align service referrals with criminogenic needs of justice-involved persons.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of this strategy is crucial for improving outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the need-to-service matching strategy using an implementation science framework.
• To assess the alignment of services with the criminogenic needs of adults under community supervision.

Main Methods:

• Utilized an evaluation framework from implementation science.
• Analyzed data from 125 adults under community supervision.
• Assessed the match between individuals' criminogenic needs and referred services.

Main Results:

• Need-to-service matching reached 81.70% of the target population.
• Match frequencies for specific needs ranged from 80.00% (family/marital) to 98.29% (alcohol/drug).
• Over-prescription of services was noted, ranging from 60.98% (education/employment) to 82.21% (antisocial patterns).

Conclusions:

• Implementation science methods are valuable for evaluating need-to-service matching.
• The study highlights the success of matching services to needs but also identifies areas for improvement, such as over-prescription.
• Benchmarks for evaluating need-to-service matching are needed to advance the field.