Northpointe Institute for Public Management is an experienced and nationally recognized correctional consulting and research firm providing software products, training and implementation services to federal, state and local criminal justice systems and policy makers.
Consulting Service Descriptions
Assess Organizational Readiness for Change
As the criminal justice field moves to a more rehabilitative approach to offender management and treatment and the demand for evidence-based practice increases, organizations are facing many changes in how they are structured internally as well as how they conduct business. Research into the success of organizational change has identified several issues and challenges that can either help or impede an organization’s success in their change plans.
Northpointe’s consulting staff has experience working with leadership to assess their readiness for change in context of the changes the organization would like to implement. The consultation approach prioritizes agency outcomes. In the process, we work with clients to identify the opportunities and threats to success and develop a plan to optimize the potential for success, including thoughtful staging of the process and effective communication with all stakeholders involved.
Strategic Planning: Aligning Intention with Practice in a Criminal Justice Organization
Northpointe has a wide variety of system planning experience working with our clients in criminal justice, juvenile justice, child welfare, human services and the non-profit sector. These public sector systems have helped to refine our planning approaches and tools. The emphasis in our planning approach is developing and maintaining an appreciation for outcomes and creating alignment of the activities in the organization with desired results.
Specifically, our approaches create capacity to systematically:
Create an Evidence-Based Organization: How to Use Research to Improve Your Agency’s Performance
Today local, state and federal agencies are being pressured to provide evidence that their policy and case management practices are effective. A growing body of research on evidence-based practices is influencing the field to identify and implement only interventions and practices shown to be effective through research.
Northpointe’s knowledge of the eight principles of evidence-based practices in the criminal justice field, our experience assisting agencies to translate those principles into practice and our expertise in research and IT development provide clients with a unique skill set to assist them to align their agency’s goals with state-of-the-art interventions and to evaluate the efficacy of the interventions they implement. Through this process, agency leaders are armed with the information necessary to identify the most effective interventions available and justify requests for funding needed to support the appropriate implementation and monitoring of these new interventions.
The Politics of Change: A Leadership View
Leaders in all criminal justice agencies and systems know the importance of building and leading change in their agency and the often predictable conflicts that arise when they present their needs and demands to local, state and federal legislators. At the same time, agency leaders are challenged to work with the public, to help them understand the issues involved in managing criminal populations, including the time and resources needed to create effective change. In this consulting assignment, Northpointe helps clients to develop a plan to identify the opportunities for and threats to effective change, at both the practical and political level.
Use Data to Monitor Implementation, Support Planning, Manage Resources and Forecast
With decreasing budgets and increasing demand for effective programming for offenders, criminal justice agencies have a growing need to evaluate the programs they implement, understand system demands for staff, programming, and resources to effectively intervene with offenders, and plan for future changes in the size and needs of the offender population. Often, criminal justice organizations do not have experience with data and information collection or the internal capacity to complete this work.
Northpointe’s staff has extensive experience working with jurisdictions around the country to develop and execute appropriate data collection and analysis plans that will inform their current implementation as well as their future planning needs.
Research Service Descriptions
Research in a Criminal Justice Agency
Northpointe will provide a one-day seminar where our researchers and agency staff can discuss the scope of data that can be mined through COMPAS, the standard reports available through COMPAS, and identify and outline the customized reports necessary for the agency to monitor its policies and practices. This may be most useful for supervisors and middle-management within the agency.
Performance Measurement: The Big Picture
This seminar identifies and explains data reports that are available through COMPAS and reinforces the value of the reports to support agency leadership in planning and evaluation of practices. Northpointe will take top administrators through the variety of reports that presently exist or can easily be created. Reports provide vital information and metrics needed for external purposes, for example, when called upon to make the case for agency performance within their criminal justice system, or for internal purposes, such as reports to help assess and understand the client population.
Target Groups: Matching Approaches to Client Risk & Need
Working with our clients, Northpointe will help design and execute a study to focus on the needs of site specific target groups – a process that will ultimately result in serving the needs of each target group more effectively. Northpointe is pioneering research into the identification and use of various offender patterns for informing internal classification and case management strategies.
Defining, Measuring & Using Outcome Data
A one-day seminar addresses the importance of outcome data and how it can be gathered, used and analyzed to exercise best practices throughout the entire agency’s decision making processes.
The gathering and interpretation of data is vital to such leadership activities as support of treatment programs, agency practices and policies including personnel requirements and operating procedures.
How to Monitor Content: Quality Data + Quality Case Plans = Success
Having an abundance of data is not very helpful if the quality of the data is poor. If the data is of lesser quality, the decisions and case plans of the agency will be of lesser quality as well. This will ultimately minimize successful outcomes. How do we assure that the information we are collecting is being obtained optimally? This one-day seminar will go through the best practices to be applied to ensure the availability and use of reliable data.
Data Analysis: 12 & 24 Month Outcome Studies
A standard research component of many Northpointe projects is a validation report and a 12 and/or 24 month outcome study. The reporting process typically includes two phases: the Psychometric Analysis and the Validation component. In combination with the Northpointe Assessment System, criminal justice agencies are able to simulate and evaluate system performance under existing or hypothetical conditions. Armed with the information, agencies are able to understand their populations, formulate more effective policies and establish more results-oriented intervention approaches.
Northpointe Research Partner Program
Many agencies just don’t have the resources on staff to do all the research they would like to do to learn more about their population. Beyond having the resources, understanding what data and or reports provide the insight into discovering the answers to their questions can be daunting. In response to this client need, Northpointe has developed a research partner program to work with agencies and to guide, advise and perform the research needed by our clients. Working with each client, we design a research program built to be an outsourced research department that will maximize the use of agency information and data for both internal and external purposes.
Training Service Descriptions
Introductory COMPAS Training
Basic training provides users hands on experience using the COMPAS instrument. Participants completing this training will understand how to:
Advanced COMPAS Training: Effectively Matching Needs with Services
Advanced COMPAS Training takes users to the next step in terms of understanding and interpreting the COMPAS instrument. This is a one-day training session. Topics covered include:
Master Trainer Certification – Train the Trainer
Northpointe offers clients the ability to establish and certify their own in-house Master COMPAS Training Group. This training will allow agencies to develop and build and maintain competency with the COMPAS software throughout the organization.
Master Trainers can be recertified every year to ensure they are maintaining the standards necessary to deliver and educate their audience properly. Yearly recertification allows Northpointe to update Master Trainers on new features that have been added to the COMPAS product and how that information is best delivered in their trainings.
COMPAS for Supervisors: Ensure Quality through Guidance and Support in Case Management
This one-day training is designed to help supervisors better understand both their offender population and their staff through instruction in the COMPAS Assessment Tool and its reporting features. COMPAS can, for example, be used to understand how the staff is interacting with and managing their case loads. This training also provides opportunities to explore the most effective ways to conduct assessment interviews to produce quality data and ensure client engagement.
Implementation of Classification and Inmate Management
Well-designed, objective classification is at the heart of any jail’s inmate management operations regardless of size. Classification is no longer just used to drive housing decisions. A well-implemented system also drives eligibility for programs, privileges and early release/community management strategies.
Northpointe has been a national leader in developing objective classification training curriculums for over 18 years. The Northpointe JICS, Decision Tree Objective Jail Inmate Classification System, is a national model taught at the National Institute of Corrections. Our highly regarded, two-day training is critical to the proper introduction of classification into the daily inmate management and administrative operations of your jail.
Motivational Interviewing Tied to Case Management
Training staff how to better communicate with offenders through motivational interviewing is the first step to bring about positive behavioral change. Northpointe however, takes this training one step further by tying the skill set developed (through motivational interviewing) to the delivery of the COMPAS assessment and the case planning process. Ultimately, this combination of interview skills with the assessment and case planning process maximizes the opportunity for a successful outcome.
Case Management—The Manager’s Role
As research grows regarding evidence based practice in offender management, supervision managers are required to adjust policy and practice within their departments to maximize positive outcomes to supervision and treatment of offenders. These changes require new knowledge and skills to support the case work and to ensure organizational performance. This training provides an introduction to the science used in the assessment process and explores how the data can be used to inform agency practice. Participants will be taught to use practical tools to integrate assessment in the organization and to ensure successful implementation.
Online Webex Training
Sometimes one-on-one training is more convenient for our clients. Webex training allows each client participant to sit at their own computer with a Northpointe trainer online to train an individual or small group over the internet. This training is especially useful to introduce all staff members to use the COMPAS software as appropriate to their duties and responsibilities.