Cross National Collaboration in Implementing Evidence-based Practices

Abstract

ABSTRACT There is an abundance of literature describing the current status of corrections around the world, particularly in the United States with its overcrowded prisons, high recidivism rates, and policy evaluations. Efforts to implement best practices and reduce institutional populations by shifting offender sentencing and resources to community programs are also prevalent. What is less documented are efforts to translate evidence-based practices across international borders through cross-national collaborations. Intuitively, best practices should translate across human-defined borders because intervening in human behavior should not change based on different legal codes. This paper summarizes the efforts of the University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute (UCCI) and Alberta’s Correctional Services Division to shift an agency’s paradigm of working with offenders, redesign provincial probation operations to establish adherence to the principles of effective intervention, and to cross nationally train and coach probation officers in the Effective Practices in Community Supervision (EPICS) model. Successes and challenges of implementing the model and of the collaboration are presented so that corrections professionals and researchers have a point of reference for future cross-national collaborations, implementation efforts, and training initiatives.