Program Profile: Minnesota's Enhanced Supervision Release Program

This was an intensive, supervised release program for persons at high risk for reoffense and who were mandated to residential treatment upon release from prison. The program gradually reduced restrictions as the persons on parole transitioned back into the community. The program is rated Ineffective. Results showed no statistically significant effects on recidivism measures, including rearrest, revocation for technical violations, reconviction, and days in prison.

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

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

Program Update

In 1990 the Minnesota Legislature directed the Minnesota Department of Corrections to create the intensive supervision program targeting individuals soon to be released from prison. Eligibility for placement was based primarily on factors related to offense type and risk level. In 2018, the Minnesota Department of Corrections revised the criteria for placement to be based entirely on actuarial risk of recidivism. CrimeSolutions has reviewed an evaluation of the program based on that change and assigned a rating of Promising. See the program profile Minnesota Intensive Supervised Release.

Program Goals

The Minnesota’s Enhanced Supervision Release Program, also called Intensive Supervised Release (ISR), required enhanced supervision of persons on parole who are at high risk for reoffending. The stated program goals were to punish the persons convicted of a crime, protect the public, facilitate employment of the person on parole with intensive community supervision, and require payment of restitution ordered by the court to compensate the victims of the persons convicted of a crime (Deschenes, Turner, and Petersilia 1995).

Population Eligibility

Incarcerated persons were eligible to participate in ISR if they have served at least two thirds of their pronounced sentence, were at high risk for reoffense, and were to be mandated to residential treatment (i.e., a halfway house) upon release from prison.

Program Components

This program was designed to provide maximum community surveillance and supervision. The participants were expected to spend approximately 40 hours per week focused on work, job-search activities, education or training, or chemical dependency treatment.

The four phases of ISR gradually reduced the restrictions placed on the persons on parole over their time in the program. The first phase, which lasted approximately 6 months, was strict house arrest, including four meetings per week with an Intensive Community Supervision (ICS) agent and random weekly drug testing. The second phase, which lasted 4 months, was modified house arrest with one face-to-face meeting weekly with an ICS agent and twice-monthly drug testing. The third phase lasted 2 months and consisted of modified house arrest, weekly face-to-face ICS agent meetings, and random drug tests at the ICS agent’s discretion. The fourth and final phase, which lasted for the rest of the supervision period, was a house curfew, with two ICS agent meetings per month and discretionary drug testing.

Key Personnel

The program was designed to have 20 to 25 supervising agents serving 12 to15 clients at once.

Study

Deschenes, Turner, and Petersilia (1995) conducted a randomized controlled trial to measure the effectiveness of Minnesota’s Enhanced Supervision Program, also called Intensive Supervised Release (ISR), on persons on parole who are at high risk of reoffense. Institution caseworkers reviewed the treatment plans of incarcerated persons who were scheduled to be released from prison within the next 6 months. An ISR information packet was completed for those who met the eligibility criteria for a mandatory residential program, and Intensive Community Supervision (ICS) agents were asked to confirm the acceptability of the residential placement. The pool of eligible ISR participants were randomly assigned to treatment and comparison groups. 

The treatment group consisted of 95 incarcerated persons who were at high risk for reoffense and received ISR. The comparison group included 81 participants who received routine supervised release. The treatment group was 96 percent male, with an average age of 30.1 years at their current conviction. The comparison group was 100 percent male, with an average age of 29.4 years at their current conviction. The racial breakdown for the treatment group was 35 percent African American and 47 percent white, whereas the comparison group was 32 percent African American and 62 percent white. There were no significant differences between the groups on baseline demographics. 

Recidivism was measured four ways: rearrest, revocation (i.e., revocation of parole for a technical violation), reconviction, and the number of days in prison upon reincarceration. The Department of Corrections official record data was used to measure outcome recidivism data. Outcomes measured were examined for the 12 months after the participants were released from prison.

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

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