U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Case Study: New York City Department of Probation's Federal Partnership Efforts

NCJ Number
248006
Author(s)
Jason Ziedenberg
Date Published
July 2014
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This report describes the benefits and uniqueness of the technical-assistance partnership between Federal agencies (the Bureau of Justice Assistance [BJA] and the National Institute of Corrections [NIC]) and the New York City Probation Department (DOP) in enabling the DOP to integrate a variety of opportunities to improve its practices and approaches.
Abstract
A critical element of the partnership's success was taking time to develop a client-consultant relationship based on trust, out of which needs, goals, and matching technical-assistance resources were identified. These resources included improved assessment instruments that focused supervision and community engagement in probation services; training in motivational interviewing of probationers, restorative justice, and community engagement, with a view toward DOP's continuing such training; and surveys to determine the strengths and gaps in the staff's readiness for new initiatives. The latter resources helped DOP focus on professional development that facilitated more openness to evidence-based programming. Reasons why this technical-assistance collaboration was more successful than many others is discussed. Appended online resources accessible through this report