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Thinking Beyond Whereabouts Unknown: Areas of Opportunity to Reduce Absconding
SESSION INFO
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
8:00 AM - 9:30 AM
Session Type: Workshop
Between 2019 and 2022, the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI) conducted a comprehensive assessment of community supervision policies and practices in four states: Colorado, Florida, Mississippi, and Montana, seeking to identify the factors driving revocations from probation and parole. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses, a common theme emerged across state community supervision populations: absconding was frequently reported as a violation behavior. As a result, CJI sought to further understand who is most likely to abscond, for what reasons, and at what point during their sentence. To learn more, CJI partnered with the Montana Department of Corrections to conduct an in-depth quantitative assessment of community supervision case files, comparing demographics, risk, needs, and responsivity factors, supervision conditions, and violations by termination type to identify correlates of absconding behavior. Additionally, CJI conducted focus groups in Montana and Florida speaking to individuals currently or formerly on community supervision to identify the circumstances of their life while on supervision that may have led to absconding, as well as larger barriers to reporting regularly and to successfully avoiding revocation. During this session, CJI will review findings from this assessment, identifying overall thematic links in the quantitative and qualitative findings, suggested opportunities for reducing absconding behavior, and discuss how agencies can improve supervision outcomes in their area.
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SESSION PRESENTERS
Caitlin Flood
Senior Policy Specialist, Crime and Justice Institute
Caitlin started her career as a public defender and has provided training and technical assistance to different jurisdictions working towards criminal justice reform through treatment courts, pretrial interventions, and community supervision reform. Caitlin leads CJI’s community supervision revocation reform work, assisting states with data-driven, evidence-based strategies to improve supervision outcomes. Caitlin is committed to reforming the justice system through the use of data-driven approaches that reduce the reliance on incarceration, strengthen community supervision practices, and include diverse voices in planning and implementation work. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Government & Law and Philosophy and her Juris Doctorate from New York University Law School.
Maja Vlajnic
Data and Policy Specialist, Crime and Justice Institute
As a member of the policy team, Maja Vlajnic works primarily with adult corrections and community supervision. She brings to the role an extensive background in scholarly research on criminal justice, as well as interdisciplinary experience in analytical work. In addition to her academic experience, she has worked on projects exploring the impact of forensic evidence on sexual assault case progression, investigating commodity misinvoicing in international trade data, and collecting and analyzing qualitative data on hate crimes. Maja holds a PhD in Criminology and Justice Policy from Northeastern University, as well as a BA in English and a BA and MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland, College Park.
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