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In July of 2005, newly-appointed Director of the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitative Services, Leanne Bertsch, re-affirmed North Dakota’s participation in the NIC TPC Initiative. Since that time, the Department has been leading the North Dakota TPC effort, with the support of the State Workforce Development Agency, North Dakota Job Services, the North Dakota Department of Human Services, and the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency.

Team Leadership Structure

The effort has been guided by the state-level policy team, including the agencies mentioned above. The day-to-day work of the initiative has been guided by internal working groups from the Department, with participation of all divisions and levels of staff.

Early Targets of Change

Work groups have been formed around the following topics:
  • Evidence Based Practice: This group supports the overall vision of the effort which is focused upon recidivism reduction. There has been a heavy emphasis on case planning based on assessed risk and criminogenic needs. Program audits are in progress to assure the quality of current practice.
  • Offender Behavior and Programming: This team has developed and implemented an integrated case plan, currently in use in a paper version.
  • Education, Vocational Training and Employment: Testing and assessment for educational, vocational and employment needs takes place at intake into prison, and these assessments follow the offender throughout the period of incarceration and into the community.
  • Revocation Decision Making: The work group has instituted the use of assessment tools to determine the level of risk, the nature of the violation, the original offense, and the offender’s response to supervision when an offender violates parole. This provides a more consistent, systematic, and community safety-based approach to making a decision as to whether revocation is appropriate.
  • Inmate Release Preparation and Discharge and Aftercare work group: Work is underway to develop a data base and automate the case planning process. At present the ITAG (prison) data base is being developed with case plans, 100% of offenders’ assessments are now in the data base, and information about the transition programming available for offenders is also accessible. A case plan manual has been developed. A continuing need in this area is for additional programming resources.
  • Release Decision Making: LSI-R assessment information and good time release dates are currently being used as a way to determine a projected release date for planning purposes.
  • Parole Supervision and Services: Field services now has access to the ITAG (prison data) data base, a first for the Department.
  • Female Offender work group: Work is underway on the development of gender-responsive programming for female offenders consistent with evidence based practices.

Assessment Strategy

The Department has fully implemented the use of the LSI-R initial assessment as part of its approach to determining appropriate interventions and a case management plan. Validation of the LSI-R on a North Dakota population is currently in progress. An assessment of risk factors has been added to the field services data base to enable this information to be used during post-release supervision.

Survival Needs

The team is currently working with the North Dakota Department of Transportation to develop a method for acquiring driver’s licenses or identity cards for all offenders when they are released.
In addition, the Interagency Council on Homelessness is supporting efforts of DOC in identifying housing for reentering offenders. The Department of Human Services is working with the team to address the need for medication for offenders reentering the community and has formed a work group to examine potential legislative changes that might be necessary.

Pre-Release Planning

Since its work on transition and reentry has begun, the Department has been able to allocate 60 beds as transitional capacity, along with 54 beds for individuals being assessed for possible return to prison. In the next biennium budget for 2007-2009, the Department will be expanding transition beds by 60. In addition, there are 30 transitional beds now available for women offenders, with an additional 45 proposed in the biennium budget. There are also now 50 half-way house beds in Fargo, ND.

Case Planning and Management

Development of a single “case plan” is underway. This plan will be utilized from the time an individual enters prison, through the release phase, and through the period of post-release supervision. Currently the case plan is developed within ITAG (prison data base) and the information is transferred to DOCSTARS (field services data base) as the offender moves through the system. However, one single paper case plan has been developed and is in testing within the department. Eventually, this will evolve into a single electronic case plan. But until a single data system can be funded, the ITAG vendor is working on developing the same data screen in both systems, so that data can be more easily transferred between systems.

Innovative Partnerships

The state team is working with the local reentry task force in Fargo, North Dakota, originally funded through the SVORI Initiative.

Technical Assistance from NIC

Since North Dakota’s participation in the TPC Initiative began, NIC has been providing technical assistance through its Cooperative Agreement Partner—the Center for Effective Public Policy. CEPP provides orientation on the TPC model, information, cross-site communication, periodic workshops for participating sites, and expert consultation from a site coordinator assigned to support North Dakota’s efforts.






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