Program Profile: Environmental Corrections Model (Australia)

This is a community corrections model of probation and parole that focuses on opportunity-reduction strategies to reduce recidivism. The program is rated Effective. There were statistically significant reductions in new arrests and longer time to new arrest for individuals in the treatment group, compared with individuals in the control group.

An Effective rating implies that implementing the program is likely to result in the intended outcome(s).

Program Goals

The Environmental Corrections Model used in Australia for probation and parole supervision moves beyond the traditional treatment–control paradigm of community corrections. Rather, this model works to address the two causes of crime: 1) opportunity and 2) propensity. Probation and parole staff help identify the specific precipitators for reoffending for each individual on supervision, and then develop plans to avoid these risky situations, thus providing individuals with a template for a prosocial lifestyle. The goal of the program is to reduce recidivism.

Program Components

Overall, the Environmental Corrections model works to reduce individuals’ opportunities to reoffend, while simultaneously working with them to reduce their propensity for choosing risky situations and exploiting the crime opportunities that they encounter. The approach considers the real risks for recidivism present in each individual’s environment and tailors supervision conditions accordingly.

The model employs opportunity- and propensity-reduction strategies. Probation and parole officers work to limit individuals’ chances to commit crime by redesigning their routine activities so that risky settings are avoided and replaced with prosocial influences. This is accomplished through the development of tailored case plan stipulations that restrict each individual’s contact with criminogenic settings that contain risky associates and activities. These stipulations must be specific to each individual based on assessments, police records, or other data that demonstrate what crime opportunities prove tempting for them. In this way, rather than providing individuals with generic restrictions to control their behavior (e.g., “You are not permitted to associate with any other individual known to have committed an offense”), each individual is given supervision conditions that are specific to their criminogenic risks. This approach works to guide individuals away from crime-conducive places, associations, and/or activities and encourages their exposure to a prosocial lifestyle.

The other component of the model includes reorienting the nature of officers’ meetings with individuals on probation and parole to be interventive and address the criminogenic needs of each individual. Specifically, officers can deliver interventions with individuals on their caseloads that teach skills in opportunity-avoidance (such as skills in decision making that help individuals avoid environments where opportunities for reoffending may be present) and opportunity resistance (such as skills in problem-solving that help them withstand chances to reoffend).

Key Personnel

In the Environmental Corrections Model, community corrections officers are repositioned as problem-solvers that seek to understand and reorganize the routines of individuals on probation and parole so that crime opportunities are avoided and resisted when encountered (Schaefer 2018). Staff training in the model consists of three sections, each with three modules. The first section, “Managing Opportunity,” provides training in an introduction to crime opportunity theories, developing opportunity-reduction case plans, and supervision tools and crime controllers. The second section, “Managing Propensity,” provides an introduction to theories of criminal propensity (particularly those related to the principles of effective correctional intervention), cognitive–behavioral techniques of intervention, and administering cognitive skills training to clients. The third section, “Managing Offenders,” provides training to special populations of individuals who have offended, strategies for monitoring them, and a review of the goals and methods of Environmental Corrections (Schaefer and Little 2020).

Program Theory

The model of Environmental Corrections applies the tenets of environmental criminological theories to community corrections practices, focusing on reducing the opportunities for reoffending for each individual. It draws on insights from research about opportunity-reduction methods of crime prevention, reasoning that within probation and parole, “opportunity will be curtailed not only by threats of formal punishment for noncompliance but, more importantly, by problem-solving officers who seek to expand informal social control over those convicted of an offense, to increase the effort they must exert to access crime opportunities, and to work with them to restructure and fill their lives with prosocial routines” (Cullen et al. 2002: 35). The Environmental Corrections Model has been elaborated by Schaefer, Cullen, and Eck (2016) and details how community corrections agencies can best target the two known factors of offending/reoffending, opportunity, and propensity.

Study 1

Schaefer and Little (2020) conducted a quasi-experimental design with propensity score matching to examine the effectiveness of the Environmental Corrections Model on recidivism over a 6-month period from May 1 through Oct. 31, 2016.

The pilot test of the Environmental Corrections Model was implemented in a probation and parole district office in a large metropolitan area in Australia. This office was selected for four reasons: 1) it was fairly isolated compared with the other district offices in the area, which minimized the chance that individuals on supervision reported to alternate offices where the intervention was not in effect; 2) the staff were considered experienced enough to accept a change in their roles; 3) the office hosted a balanced caseload of supervision orders and characteristics of supervised individuals and was not saturated with any special categories of individuals on probation or parole; and 4) the catchment area consisted of communities that were relatively socioeconomically disadvantaged and experienced higher rates of crime, which helped draw attention to some of the place-based risks for offending to which individuals on probation and parole were exposed. During the intervention period, all staff in the treatment office (n = 13) received training on and used the Environmental Corrections model in the execution of their duties to ensure that all individuals on probation or parole reporting to this district office were receiving opportunity reduction supervision. The control group was the district office that was geographically nearest the pilot site and that had comparable caseload characteristics.

Data were provided by the state corrections agency following the completion of the 6-month intervention period. The data included information on the individuals on supervision, the offenses, and order characteristics for all individuals supervised at both the treatment and control offices. The final dataset contained information for all individuals supervised at these two district offices from Jan. 1, 2015, to Oct. 31, 2016.

Two statistically equivalent groups were created through propensity score matching. Propensity scores were calculated using logistic regression with 19 covariates, including individual characteristics (age at the time of the intervention, gender, country of birth, identification as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander); offense characteristics (number of offenses listed on the current order, most serious offense for the current order; whether the offenses fell into any of the categories: major violence, minor violence, drugs, property, weapons, public order); order characteristics (order type, whether the individual was serving multiple concurrent orders); and risk characteristics of each person on probation or parole. Nearest neighbor matching without replacement was used, and exact matching within risk of reoffending categories was specified to ensure that individuals from the treatment group would match exactly with an individual from the control group who had a similar covariate distribution within each of the risk of reoffending categories.

After matching, there were 258 individuals in the treatment group and 258 in the control group. Individuals in the treatment group were on average 32.5 years old, and individuals in the control group were on average 33.4 years old. Most individuals in the sample were on probation (47 percent of the treatment group and 47 percent of the control group). Thirty-three percent of the treatment group and 33 percent of the control group were on court-ordered parole. The two most common offense types were property offenses (46 percent of the treatment group and 46 percent of the control group) and drug offenses (37 percent of the treatment group and 37 percent of the control group).

Reoffending was operationalized as a new offense as recorded by the police, and the rate was calculated as the number of orders incurring a re-offense relative to the number of active orders within a given month. The analysis was completed using the two propensity score–matched groups, using individuals as the case and controlling for several confounding variables that affect the risk of reoffending, to compare the cumulative rates of reoffending across groups following the implementation of the Environmental Corrections Model. A Kaplan–Meier analysis was used to assess the time to re-offense. No subgroup analysis was conducted.

While the Environmental Corrections Model was being implemented the research team completed field observations and conducted shadowing of officers’ meetings with their clients. Further, group-based booster training sessions occurred on seven occasions between May and October 2016 that provided refresher and advanced training where staff performance deficiencies were noted or as problems emerged. Topics included dealing with intervention-averse clients, identifying opportunity-related criminogenic risks, scheduling/rescheduling clients’ routine activities, and graduated rewards and sanctions (Schaefer and Little 2020).

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

Adult Reentry Programs

This practice involves correctional programs that focus on the transition of individuals from prison into the community. Reentry programs involve treatment or services that have been initiated while the individual is in custody and a follow-up component after the individual is released. The practice is rated Promising for reducing recidivism.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency - Multiple crime/offense types

Rehabilitation Programs for Adults Convicted of a Crime

This practice includes programs that are designed to reduce recidivism among adults by improving their behaviors, skills, mental health, social functioning, and access to education and employment. They may become participants in rehabilitation programs during multiple points in their involvement with the criminal justice system. This practice is rated Promising for reducing recidivism among adults who have been convicted of an offense.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency - Multiple crime/offense types

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?