Summary
Collaborative and creative research to advance evidence-based practices and treatment to practitioners and policymakers in the criminal justice and health fields.
We work with our partners in crafting new policies focused on proactively preventing criminal behavior rather than simply responding to it. Click here to check out a summary of ACE! in the last year.
Faye S. Taxman is Director of the Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence (ACE!).
News
Washington Post, – August 7, 2023
Mississippi’s lifetime ban on certain felons voting constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and violates the Eighth Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Friday, potentially paving the way for tens of thousands to regain their voting rights.
A panel of 5th Circuit judges ruled 2-1 in favor of the plaintiffs, writing that the section at issue in Mississippi’s state constitution “ensures that they will never be fully rehabilitated, continues to punish them beyond the term their culpability requires, and serves no protective function to society.”
About
Who We Are
The Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence (ACE!) is a dynamic center that aims to bridge disciplines and bring researchers, practitioners, and policymakers together to grapple with issues that affect criminal justice and health systems. As part of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, ACE!’s mission is three-pronged:
- To conduct high quality research;
- To form lasting partnerships with the community; and
- To develop the next generation of researchers.
Our work is collaborative and creative, and we have built a strong network of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students who work with practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and criminal justice-involved individuals to promote evidence-informed approaches.
ACE! interacts and works across disciplines at GMU, as well as other Universities and Research Organizations. At GMU, ACE! works with colleagues in the College of Health and Human Services, Volgenau School of Engineering, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.
Founded in 2010 by Drs. Faye Taxman and Danielle Rudes, ACE!’s goals are:
We work with federal, state, local, and community-based partners to further the conversation on the state of corrections. Over 200 jurisdictions have used or are currently using our translational tools (SUSTAIN, RNR Simulation Tool). Our research informs evidence-based practices for incarcerated, community corrections, and community-based programs and provides programs a method to self-evaluate their adherence to evidence-based practices. Additionally, our team publishes in numerous academic and practitioner journals, presents at professional conferences nationwide and internationally, and delivers webinars on a variety of topics.
What We Do
At ACE! our primary focus is on action research models with an emphasis on participatory research collaborative models. The frameworks assists individuals and programs to use data to continuously improve practices such as working relationships, interventions, practices and treatments aimed at increasing public safety, and improving individuals’ well-being.
Our work includes developing translational tools, conducting randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or high quality quasi-experimental design studies, conducting program and policy evaluation, analyzing data, delivering hands-on training and technical assistance, disseminating our work through presentations, webinars, and publications, and developing the next generation of researchers through teaching and mentorship. Our Directors are leaders in the field: Faye S. Taxman as an ASC Fellow and Danielle Rudes as a 2018 ASC Teaching Award.
Our work covers multiple intercept points of the criminal justice system, including community corrections, pretrial, jail, prison, and non-justice system practices/interventions. We work extensively with community treatment providers who serve criminal justice-involved individuals.
For more information on specific projects, visit Major Projects.
Areas of Expertise
- Seamless systems of care models that link the criminal justice with other service delivery systems (Boundaryless Systems of Care)
- Reengineering probation and parole supervision services and organizational change models
- Examining the use of evidence-based practice in correctional and drug treatment settings and the factors that affect the adoption of science-based processes and interventions
- Examining the efficacy of various models of technology transfer and processes to integrate treatment and supervision
- Program design, experimentation and evaluation, advanced data collection systems
- Web-based interventions
- Implementation Science and Implementation Organizational Interventions
- Self-directed Interventions
- Disenfranchisement
- Organizational theory
- Socio-legal studies
- Examining how street-level workers negotiate organizational change and the impact their decisions have upon policy and practice
- Qualitative research methods (particularly ethnography)
- Quantitative research methods (including advanced techniques such as latent variable modeling, meta-analysis, etc.)
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Contact
Email: Center
Locations
The Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence! (ACE!)
4400 University Drive
MSN 6D3
Fairfax, VA 22030
Phone: 703-995-8555
Fax: 703-993-6020
Web Links
Current Major Projects
Delaware RNR
The Delaware Department of Corrections (DE DOC) began implementing the RNR Simulation Tool in their Level 5 facilities (prisons) in 2013 and is in the process of implementing it in Level 4 facilities (reentry). DE DOC employs all three portals of the tool, assessing individual needs and making programming recommendations, examining program quality, and determining where additional programming and services are needed.
Developing Practice Guidelines for Supervision Agencies
The supervision field lacks clear, guided practice statements regarding how best to manage individuals in the community. This contributes to inconsistency across agencies, and perceptions of unfair and illegitimate practices. This project uses a modified RAND/University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Appropriateness Method (RAM) process to create Practice Guidelines in six areas: Violent or Gang-Involved, Mental Health Disorders, Young Adults, Intimate Partner Violence, Driving While Intoxicated, and Substance Use Disorders. The overarching goals are to accelerate the use of evidence-based practices for different risk-need profiles, to create more fairness in how noncompliance to conditions of supervision are handled, and to improve successful outcomes from supervision.
Developmental Reentry for Emerging Adult Management (DREAM)
The DREAM program is a cognitive-behavioral program tailored to address key emerging adult development issues through group/individualized sessions, comprehensive case management, and reentry services. This program will be tested through a randomized controlled trial comparing DREAM to standard jail services. The goal is to develop and test tools that can help staff improve young individuals’ behavior and outcomes both inside the jail and after release.
E-Connect
A service system intervention for justice youth at risk for suicide (PI is Dr. Gail Wasserman, Columbia University). The specific aims are to develop and test a technological cross-system identification and linkage service model that trains staff, formalizes interagency collaboration and includes referral decision-making criteria. The tool uses a mobile application to seamlessly combine screening for suicide and related behavioral health problems.
Engineering Research Center (ERC) to Advance Recovery Efforts
This project is a collaboration with the Volgenau School of Engineering with funding from the National Science Foundation. The goal of this program it to explore the use of wearable technology to help individuals with substance use disorders.
Evaluation of Stepping up Efforts to Improve MH Services and Justice Utilization (NIMH)
This 5-year study evaluates whether the Stepping Up Initiative overcomes barriers to implementation of EBPPs and the impact on key outcomes, such as increased number of clients receiving behavioral health services, increased use of EBPPs, and dedicated resources to advance the use of EBPPs. The study uses the CJ Evidence-Based Interagency Implementation Model (CJ-IIM) and draws on both quantitative and qualitative methods to understand which dissemination and implementation (D/I) change processes positively impact the expanded use of EBPPs in CJ.
Hidalgo County Emerging Adults Strategy (HCEAS)
he purpose of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Hidalgo County Emerging Adult Strategy (HCEAS), a Swift, Certain, Fair (SCF) program aimed at emerging adults under community supervision in Hidalgo County, Texas. HCEAS, operating since April 2017, is a specialized probation caseload designed to use swift, certain, and fair incentives and sanctions to promote positive behaviors by addressing key EA developmental issues during supervision. A randomized design is being used to evaluate this program, taking into account key outcomes such as revocations and stabilizing factors (e.g., employment, housing)
Improving Access to Substance Abuse EBPs for Youth in the Justice System
The goal of this study, led by Dr. Ashli Sheidow (Oregon Social Learning Center), is to examine the use of contingency management in juvenile probation offices. To achieve this goal, the project looks at the feasibility of JPOs to deliver an AOD abuse intervention, clinical efficacy for JPOs as service delivery providers, and identify any barriers that would need to be addressed for JPOs to deliver such services.
Innovations Suite Technical Assistance
CE! partners with Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice, and other organizations (funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)) to provide training and technical assistance to agencies who have received grants through BJA’s Innovations Suite. We help co-facilitate two Researcher-Practitioner Fellows Academies per year and collaborate with the group to create tools to facilitate active research projects.
Integrating Services to Improve Social Determinants of Health
This project aims to build engagement among nontraditional health partners (i.e., criminal justice (CJ), community health care providers), address social determinants of health (SDOH) (e.g., housing, substance use, food/nutrition) for a highly disadvantaged population, and build collaboration enhancing clients’ service access through a centralized online platform to connect CJ and community providers.
Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN) Coordination and Translation Center
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) formed the Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN) to test different methods to reduce the negative consequences of opioid abuse among individuals in the justice system. This five year coordination center will be to support NIDA’s JCOIN initiative including an analytical center, 10 research centers, and our work. This includes an administrative core, translational/implementation core, dissemination/stakeholders core, education/research core and pilot funding core. The translational core will be responsible for implementing studies to examine the source, channel, message for various audiences that yields the greatest uptake. The dissemination/stakeholder core will develop new translational materials for the field with outreach to an array of stakeholders with the goal of inspiring innovation and organizational change. The education/research core will train and mentor new scholars of varying levels from undergraduate to post-doctoral.
Juvenile Justice Project
This project is a collaboration with a county level court-services unit. The study includes a mixed-method (largely qualitative) design to examine understanding and use of evidence based practices within juvenile probation, detention, boys/girls half-way houses, juvenile and adult intake and adult probation. Funded twice by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) through a Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (JAG), the Juvenile Justice project includes an intensive researcher-practitioner partnership to learn about agency processes and work to improve them around the use of EBPs.
North Carolina Predictive Analytics Supervision Effort (NC-PASE)
NC-PASE is designed to use existing agency data to conduct predictive analytics. The program identifies profiles within the high to moderate risk population and builds Strategic Supervision Guidelines (SSG), or tailored supervision practices, for various risk-need profiles in different geographic areas.
Philadelphia Adult Probation and Parole Department
The Philadelphia Adult Probation and Parole Department (APPD) has collaborated with ACE! since 2013. This project has involved all officers completing the SOARING2/SUSTAIN eLearning, as well as training supervisors to serve as coaches. In addition, ACE! developed a needs assessment and case planning tool that is used by the 200+ APPD probation officers.
RNR Simulation Tool
The RNR Simulation Tool is designed to assist justice and treatment agencies in determining what forms of programming will be most effective in reducing recidivism and improving outcomes within their population. Implemented in over 200 jurisdictions, it is comprised of three portals that provide decision-support at the client (Assess an Individual), program (Program Tool for Adults), and system level (Assess Jurisdiction’s Capacity).
STEER
Stop, Triage, Engage, Educate, and Rehabilitate is a diversion program where police officers work with community treatment to divert individuals toward treatment instead of the criminal justice system. ACE! is conducting an evaluation of this pre-arrest diversion by using a randomized controlled trial.
SUSTAIN
SUSTAIN (Staff Undertaking Skills to Advance Innovation) is a learning system that consists of both eLearning and coaching. It is designed to assist professionals in building skills associated for the effective management of individuals involved in the criminal justice system. It includes a values-based training of coaching to develop internal coaches which will then work on internal capacity to implement evidence-based supervision. The state of Texas has funded 14 jurisdictions to implement SUSTAIN and the Virginia Department of Corrections has been using SUSTAIN for four years. SUSTAIN was originally developed under a grant funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (2010-DB-BX-K077) with Ralph Serin of University of Ottawa. The original material was developed by both laboratories.
The Prison Project
The Prison Project is a multi-method study of six prisons (male/female, maximum, medium, and minimum security levels) within the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Using surveys and interviews with staff and inmates, the project examines core correctional concepts related to procedural justice including relationships, trust, and legitimacy.
Use of MAT in Problem Solving Courts
Expanding the use of MAT in specialty courts is a priority of NADCP as well as a national priority of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (2018). Surveys of problem solving courts and treatment providers have documented that few problem-solving courts have dedicated treatment services, and even though treatment staff are part of the problem-solving teams, appropriate treatment is not often available (Taxman, et al., 2018). And, the use of MAT may be impacted by the knowledge and attitude of treatment and problem-solving court staff. This administrative supplement will assist in understanding two issues: 1) the current utilization of MAT among problem solving courts; and 2) the barriers and facilitators to the utilization of MAT in problem solving court settings.
YOURS
YOURS is designed to be an interactive workbook for individuals on community supervision that helps assess “where they’re at” and work through goal setting. YOURS has been used by both community supervision and treatment providers to empower clients.
