Extending Dynamic Mapping to Reentry Practitioners
| DOI | 10.1177/0032885515596512 |
| Author | Megan Denver,Nancy G. La Vigne |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2015
Article
The Prison Journal
2015, Vol. 95(4) 493 –509
Extending Dynamic
© 2015 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/0032885515596512
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Practitioners: An
Exploration of Rhode
Island’s Community
Supervision Mapping
System
Nancy G. La Vigne1 and Megan Denver2
Abstract
Although dynamic mapping is an increasingly popular tool for law
enforcement, this technology is uncommon for reentry practitioners. This
article introduces the Community Supervision Mapping System (CSMS),
a web-based tool that routinely integrates Rhode Island Department of
Corrections data into a user-friendly interface designed for those who
supervise and provide service referrals to probationers. Using pre- and post-
implementation survey data and actual usage data, we find that probation
officers who adopt the new technology find the system useful and easy to
use. We also learned that current usage is a better indicator of future use
than is a respondent's reported intention to use the system.
Keywords
prisoner reentry, supervision, geospatial technology
1The Urban Institute, Washington, DC, USA
2University at Albany, State University of New York, USA
Corresponding Author:
Nancy G. La Vigne, The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street NW, Washington, DC 20037, USA.
Email: nlavigne@urban.org
494
The Prison Journal 95(4)
Introduction
Computer mapping has the potential to dramatically shift the way in which
the criminal justice field approaches topics such as crime control and offender
supervision. Indeed, given the valuable role that geospatial applications can
play, they are an increasingly important tool for practitioners, policymakers,
and researchers in the field of criminal justice.1 Mapping has been used to
identify crime hot spots and trends, assess the allocation of prisoner reentry
resources, evaluate potential justice policy options, and explain crime and
reentry patterns to government officials and the public. Unfortunately, most
justice mapping efforts use static data that can quickly become outdated. In
many cases, the mapping must be done by trained analysts and only the final
products are available for practitioner users.
This article describes the way in which practitioners accepted and used a
new mapping tool that was piloted in the state of Rhode Island in 2008, with
the goal of offering regularly updated spatial information within a user-
friendly software format for practitioners. The Community Supervision
Mapping System (CSMS) was designed primarily to provide probation offi-
cers and reentry service providers2 with information about services, resources,
and locations to aid in the supervision and reentry of returning prisoners.3
Importantly, the introduction of this new web-based tool had varying degrees
of user interest and adoption. Employing the technology acceptance model
(TAM), a popular and influential theory to explain user willingness (or
unwillingness) to accept and use available technology, this article explores
the adoption patterns of CSMS by its users. In other words, when a low-cost,
user-friendly mapping tool is introduced to a new type of justice practitioner
(probation officers, reentry providers) in addition to law enforcement offi-
cials (who are typically more exposed to mapping tools), who adopts, why do
they adopt it, and how do they use the new technology?
The following sections provide a brief background on previous reentry and
justice mapping efforts, an overview of CSMS, and a description of the theories
underlying the TAM. A description of the different types of CSMS adopters and
the factors that influence their adoption of this new technology is supported by
data analyses examining their adoption patterns. This article closes with a dis-
cussion of the implications of those analysis results, which offer insights to
other jurisdictions seeking to implement new criminal justice technologies.
History of Reentry and Justice Mapping
CSMS builds on previous efforts to use geospatial technology and approaches
to understand prisoner reentry at the local level. Over a decade ago, researchers
La Vigne and Denver
495
began mapping patterns of incarceration and related issues such as poverty,
crime, and public service use across neighborhoods and cities, with much of
this work undertaken by the Justice Mapping Center4 (Clear & Cadora, 2002).
Expanding on this approach and other efforts to map justice topics, the Urban
Institute (Urban) launched the Reentry Mapping Network (RMN) in 2002. The
Network eventually comprised community-based organizations in 14 jurisdic-
tions, including The Providence Plan (the developer of CSMS), which ana-
lyzed and mapped reentry data to inform local policy and practice.5 The work
of the RMN sites, the Justice Mapping Center, The Providence Plan, and other
reentry mapping projects influenced policy in jurisdictions across the country,
from the repeal of offender voter disenfranchisement laws to the reallocation of
resources from corrections to reentry support services.6 CSMS represents an
effort to move the field forward beyond static, macro-level maps, creating a
new generation of mapping applications that are useful in the day-to-day work
of practitioners.
Community supervision agencies, reentry service providers, and other
practitioners who work closely with returning prisoners have been somewhat
slow to adopt geospatial technology and incorporate it into their work, in part
due to the lack of user-friendly software applications tailored to their needs.
Some multi-agency criminal justice data systems with mapping components
have incorporated community supervision data, but most are complex, pro-
prietary systems focused primarily on law enforcement.7 Indeed, law enforce-
ment is an entity within the larger criminal justice community that has
embraced mapping to the greatest degree. Law enforcement agencies use
mapping to identify crime hot spots, examine crime patterns and trends, dis-
tribute police resources effectively, and aid investigations.8 For many law
enforcement agencies, real-time, user-driven mapping is now the centerpiece
of a strategic, data-guided approach to crime prevention and response. CSMS
represents an effort to expand this level of technology adoption to other crim-
inal justice practitioners.
The CSMS
CSMS is an online tool that was designed to be a user-friendly, low-cost soft-
ware for easy replication in other jurisdictions. The data come from the
Rhode Island Department of Corrections and the system is automatically
updated each night. The data points available for each probationer include
current address, personal characteristics (name, gender, race, date of birth),
criminal history (including Department of Corrections identification number,
offense history, and prison release date), and probation case information
(supervision status, caseload number, probation officer, probation officer
496
The Prison Journal 95(4)
contact information, probation start and end dates). Photos are also available
for those who were formerly incarcerated in any of Rhode Island’s Adult
Correctional Institutions, which amount to approximately half of the proba-
tioners. The data can be searched or filtered based on location (distance from
a specified address), time frame (such as released in the past month), and/or
certain probationer characteristics.9
The development of CSMS was an ongoing, iterative process that incor-
porated extensive input from end users; in addition to feedback and guidance
from a local advisory group composed of probation officers, probation super-
visors, police officers, reentry service providers and a national advisory
group of individuals with interest and expertise in justice mapping (which
represented nonprofits and criminal justice agencies from across the coun-
try), the development team continued to make revisions and expand the
application’s functionality in response to user feedback. The Providence Plan
also provided training sessions (typically 90 minutes in duration) for new
users, provided handouts and tip sheets, and sent “E-blasts”—emails to
CSMS users to provide updates and information. Finally, the development
team worked to identify “super users” in each office to provide users with
...
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