Author: Diane Kincaid

Probation, Parole and Community Corrections...

American Probation and Parole Association

P.O. Box 11910
Lexington, KY 40578-1910

Phone: 859-244-8203
Fax: 859-244-8001
E-mail: appa@csg.org
www.appa-net.org

American Probation and Parole Association

Probation, Parole and Community Corrections...

www.appa-net.org

Brand Promise
Community Corrections is vital to the safety and health of
communities,
helping restore juvenile and adult offenders to lead
productive lives.

Begin building the brand from the inside with your teams. First explain the brand’s value in face-to-face meetings, internal e-mails, newsletters, and other venues. Use the brand logo, tagline, and messages where appropriate so employees begin to understand and support the program. Once the brand has been unveiled, consider drafting newsletter feature stories that spotlight officers and other team members whose accomplishments and activities embody the brand values. Introduce partner agencies and groups to the new brand program, and co-brand joint materials as appropriate.
Use the visual logo and tagline in all of your existing and future communications. Incorporate the look and language into your Web site. Use on business cards, automatic e-mail addresses, letterhead, newsletters, meeting materials, brochures, shirts and caps, pins and posters.
Commit to using the key messages outlined here to drive awareness of our brand and favorable opinions of our profession.
Create a news media outreach program to make print, broadcast, and online media aware of the new branding initiative, our value as an organization, and important programs and issues. Create a “news bureau,” driven by a quarterly calendar of news ideas. Reach out to media regularly to announce events, milestones, and feature story ideas to keep our brand in the news. Invite reporters to come in for briefings about important issues, or to participate in a “day-in-the-life” of officers to build awareness of how you contribute to the community.
Develop a brand speakers’ program to advance the Community Corrections/Probation and Parole profile in your community. Officers, administrators, or other key employees can be tapped to speak at various local venues to raise awareness of your contributions to the community.

Consider existing branding opportunities such as Probation, Parole and Community Supervision Week (third week of July), Victims’ Rights Week (April), and agency awards (i.e., Line Officer of the Year). These are all branding opportunities. When reaching out to media or the community, brand your efforts to associate Community Corrections/Probation and Parole with positive news hooks.
Seek out opportunities for public service announcements (PSAs). Reach out to media and/or community affairs representatives to see if they will donate space or time to help you get the word out. Print, broadcast or outdoor billboards are all options.
Pillars-how we deliver on our promise
Monitoring behavior
Fearless pursuit of helping people turn their live around
Results-driven management
Specialization
Technological innovation
Strong cost/value proposition
Accountability
Peace officer status
Personality-the way we act
Strong
Dedicated
Results-driven
Knowledgeable about issues and treatment/supervision
Caring and tough
Ethical
Innovative
Progressive

Benefits-yield
Safer communities/lower crime
Return to productivity for people; healthy families
Lower costs (over-crowded jails, health-care, etc.)
Better long-term solution for nation’s justice system

Making the case for probation, parole and community corrections…
Since 1995, the number of adults on probation and parole has increased nearly 30 percent, compared with 2.9 percent for prisons and 4 percent for jails.
Funding for probation and parole has not kept pave with the jump in numbers of offenders needing supervision.
The average cost per day to monitor an individual on probation or parole is $3.10 per offender, per day—9 percent of the cost of incarceration.
Research shows that if evidence-based probation and parole best practices were implemented, state prison inmate populations could be reduced by up to 50 percent.
A 10 percent reduction in state prison population in 2005 would have saved taxpayers $98.3 million; a 50 percent decrease would have saved $3.3 billion.
At least 95 percent of all state prisoners will be released. Nearly 80 percent will be released to parole supervision.
In the 1980s, 2.5 million prisoners reentered society from jails and prisons. This number will reach 7 million in this decade.

Key Messages
The field of community corrections—probation and parole officers and other critical support services—is doing work that makes a difference in the safety of our communities and society. We provide supervision and treatment resources to protect and help people, families and communities address the issues and problems that drive crime.
Our field is a vital part of the nation’s justice system and the most cost effective solution to long-term public safety. We are dramatically underfunded compared to other parts of the system at a time when the nation desperately needs our capabilities and resources to bring more effective and modern approaches to quelling crime.
There is real urgency for the kind of forward-thinking systemic approaches to curbing crime that probation, parole and community corrections provide as the nation faces what thought leaders call a “massive and unprecedented influx” of prisoners re-entering society.

American Probation and Parole Association

P.O. Box 11910
Lexington, KY 40578-1910

Phone: 859-244-8203
Fax: 859-244-8001
E-mail: appa@csg.org