Intensive Community Supervision in Minnesota, 1990-1992:  A Dual Experiment in Prison Diversion and Enhanced Supervised Release

For this program evaluation, which utilized a randomized
field experiment, two separate substudies were conducted: one
investigated the "front door" Intensive Community Supervision (ICS)
program that diverted prisoners into the community at the beginning of
their prison terms, and the other studied the "back door" Intensive
Supervised Release (ISR) program that provided enhanced supervision
services for offenders who were just finishing their terms of
confinement and had a residential mandate upon release from
prison. The random assignment procedure began in October 1990 and
continued until June 1992. Prison caseworkers in the Office of Adult
Release (OAR) within the Minnesota Department of Corrections screened
offenders for participation in the prison diversion program (ICS)
according to established criteria. The RAND coordinator assigned
offenders to the experimental program or to the control program
(prison) by consulting a predetermined random list of assignments. For
the ISR program, institutional caseworkers reviewed the treatment
plans for offenders who were scheduled to be released from prison
within the next six months. The same procedure for random assignment
was used as in the ICS study. The final sample sizes were 124 in the
ICS program and 176 in the ISR program. Parts 1 and 9, Background
Data, include demographic information such as sex, race, education,
marital status, number of dependents, and living arrangement at time
of most recent arrest. Also included is information on the offender's
prior employment history, drug use prior to drug treatment, status
after random assignment, various probation/parole/release conditions
ordered, and criminal record information for prior arrests, for the
governing offense and for the offense immediately prior to the current
prison admission. Each offender was also rated on various items
relating to risk of recidivism and need for treatment. The 6-month,
12-month, and 13-month review data (Parts 2-4 and 10-12) record the
same information for each month. Variables provide information on the
current status of the offender, days under regular supervision,
intensive community supervision, special services, electronic
surveillance, detention or incarceration (jail or prison), and days on
other status. Information was also recorded for each month during the
review regarding number and type of face-to-face contacts, number and
type of phone contacts, number of drug tests taken, number and type of
monitoring checks performed, number and type of sessions in
counseling, number of days job hunting or in training, hours of
community service, number of days employed and amount of earnings,
amount of fines and court costs paid, amount of victim restitution
paid, and amount of probation fees paid. Because a large percentage of
the ICS control offenders were expected to remain in prison during a
12-month follow-up (resulting in premature recidivism outcomes),
recidivism data for all ICS offenders were collected for a period of
24 months after assignment to the study (Part 5). Part 5 contains up
to three status codes and number of days at each status for months
1-25 for the ICS cases only. Also included is information on work
release, violations of supervision, absconding, returns to jail,
returns to prison, and other releases. Parts 6 and 13 provide drug
violation data, including first and second type of drug, action taken,
and number of days since random assignment. Parts 7 and 14 provide
technical violation data, including technical violation, first,
second, and third action taken, days from assignment to each action,
and most serious action taken. Finally, Parts 8 and 15 provide arrest
data, including arrest code, age at arrest, if convicted, conviction
code, type of sentence, and age at disposition. Dates were converted
by RAND to time-lapse variables for the public release files for
purposes of time-at-risk analysis.