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Justice System

Collaborating for Community Safety

Agencies that comprise our justice system play a critical role in safeguarding communities, and providing services to support persons who are or have been justice system involved.

Justice organizations work to improve outcomes for justice involved individuals, provide supportive programs and services, and secure funding by working with an evaluation consultant. Our evaluation consultants help justice agencies in identifying trends over time, building dashboards to demonstrate outcomes, and document the effectiveness of internal or grant funded initiatives.

For over 20 years, EVALCORP has supported public agencies through needs assessment, program evaluation, strategic planning, and training services. Our expertise spans multiple sectors, including law enforcement, probation, courts, and working with multi-agency Advisory Boards or Taskforces. Our team is equipped to design and implement strategies that help justice agencies increase certainty from a data-informed perspective.

Justice System Expertise and Clients

EVALCORP has partnered with criminal justice organizations across the nation on a variety of evaluation projects. Our clients range from law enforcement agencies, community corrections and nonprofit organizations. Over the years, we have collaborated with justice organizations on both large-scale evaluations and localized assessments to improve program effectiveness, public safety, and individual, as well as community well-being.

Our consulting team holds expertise in evaluation of crime prevention and public safety programs. We have collaborated with organizations addressing justice-related issues such as reentry, restorative justice, diversion, specialty courts, gang violence, Organized Retail Theft (ORT) prevention, victim services, specialized programs, ORT vertical prosecution, and impaired driving, among others.

Our team is well-versed in conducting trauma-informed research and applying trauma-informed care approaches in our consulting work. This approach is essential for partnering both with programs that provide victim services as well as for those that work directly with justice-involved populations.

We are skilled at working effectively with justice-involved populations, both adult and juvenile, and recognize the importance of cultural competency when designing and implementing research and evaluation studies. We understand the unique challenges often faced, such as barriers to rehabilitation, reentry, employment, and the risk of recidivism. Our decades of experience enable us to design and implement research and evaluation projects that are methodologically sound and responsive to the needs of justice-involved populations and the organizations that serve them.

At EVALCORP, we are committed to designing and conducting evaluations that are representative of local needs. We align our approach to advancing project goals through meaningful and intentional engagement and rigorous research methods. Whether evaluating ORT programs, probation models, reentry programs, or diversion efforts, we collaborate with justice system community partners to ensure that our findings drive actionable solutions.

Justice-Involved Evaluation Clients

A select list of our justice system clients include:

Anaheim Police Department
Bakersfield Police Department
Chicago Police Department
Cook County Adult Probation Department
Cook County Department of Corrections
Costa Mesa Police Department
Hemet Police Department
Irvine Police Department
Kern County Behavioral Health & Recovery Services
Merced County Probation Department
Orange County District Attorney’s Office
Orange County Sheriff’s Department
Palm Springs Police Department
Riverside County Probation Department
Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office
San Luis Obispo Probation Department
San Ramon Police Department
Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office
Ventura County Probation Agency
Ventura County Sheriff’s Office
See our full client list

Case Study: Evaluation of AB 109 Public Safety Realignment in Ventura County

Client: Ventura County Probation Agency

Service Type: System Level Evaluation

Context: When California’s AB 109 Public Safety Realignment Act shifted responsibility for certain offenders from the state to the county level, Ventura County’s Community Corrections Partnership (CCP) needed rigorous, ongoing evaluation to measure success and guide strategic decision-making during a major policy transition. For over a decade, EVALCORP has partnered with the Ventura County Probation Agency to evaluate the county’s realignment efforts and support the CCP and system partner agencies in data-informed planning and service delivery.

Approach

EVALCORP led a foundational assessment to inventory available data and map partner engagement across the system. We established the infrastructure for increasingly sophisticated recidivism analyses and the assessment of the impacts of programming/services for the County’s AB 109 population and their families. Drawing on integrated data from the Ventura County Probation Agency and Sheriff’s Office, our team conducted comprehensive longitudinal analyses across all three realignment subpopulations: straight-sentence, split-sentence, and post-release community supervision (PRCS). As the partnership matured, our evaluation support expanded to include program-specific assessments of services such as the Adult Reporting and Resource Center (ARRC), incorporating surveys and focus groups alongside quantitative outcome data.

EVALCORP delivered findings through evaluation briefs, data inventories, and presentations to CCP leadership, contributing to the institutional knowledge and evidence base Ventura County desired for continuous, community-level improvement.

Impacts Achieved

Across a decade of sustained evaluation partnership, the overall three-year recidivism rates have declined from 59% to 46% across the AB 109 population. Clients participating in mental health, substance use, and other types of services had lower recidivism rates than those who did not engage in services. Evaluation data revealed that the six months immediately after release represented the highest-risk window for reoffending, equipping the CCP with actionable intelligence for targeted early intervention. Additionally, program-level findings showed that ARRC clients who advanced beyond the first service phase had rearrest and recidivism rates 30% and 18% lower, respectively. Between 74% and 91% of probation clients rated services they had received as helpful, and a majority reported strong, supportive relationships with their Deputy Probation Officers.

Criminal Justice Report Samples

When partnering with organizations serving justice-involved populations, EVALCORP crafts user-friendly reports with actionable data-driven insights tailored to organizational needs. This allows criminal justice programs to maximize their impact on community safety.