Crisis of Crime is an educational podcast hosted by Criminologist Rachel Means, where she discusses topics related to criminology, criminal justice reform, social justice, and more. Our Chief Alliance Officer, Ben Williams, had a great discussion with Rachel about TRACKtech solutions and how they are designed to help reduce recidivism rates among individuals reentering society, as well as ease caseloads for community supervision officers. Listen to the episode, TRACKtech: A Modern Solution to Community Supervision and Rehabilitation. Rachel highlights that she and Ben “discuss everything from how to reduce the societal stigma of having a criminal record to using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to reduce recidivism rates.”
Let’s start off with a little background about TRACKtech as relayed through Ben. Our founder and CEO Michael Hirschman, who has been involved with law enforcement for many years, was inspired to develop the TRACKtech platform while working in Colorado with a team that provided supervision and compliance monitoring services to local jurisdictions. Through his work with individuals, he asked some perplexing questions about how they prepare or are ready to integrate back into society again. Additionally, he started to think about caseloads and how many individuals’ officers and supervisors are in charge of monitoring at one time. According to data, average caseloads are well in excess of the recommended American Parole Probation Association’s guidelines, which is 20 high-risk clients per officer and 60 in the other circumstances. Across the country we, at TRACKtech, have seen these caseloads extend up to the mid 100’s. This begs the question of does an officer really have time to spend with clients and act in a rehabilitative manner to support them?
Many individuals face hardships and barriers post-incarceration and reentry. Some of these obstacles they face include technical violations, which might be missing a drug test, curfew check, interview or court date. These technical violations are usually what land a person behind bars again. “As a country, we spend nearly $3 billion a year as consequence of these technical violations,” Ben explains. This is because people are sent back to jail and then sit there until they can post bail or their court date comes. To reduce these violations, individuals need more rehabilitative structure and resources to support them.
TRACKtech is committed to helping individuals reduce technical violations as well their reoffending rates, known as recidivism. Getting to the root cause of recidivism is hard and as Ben pointed out, “this is because of a complex set of personal social and economic factors that lead an individual to committing an offense related to drug or crime.” There are many resources available for individuals and TRACKtech is committed to making them easily available for people. We have partnered with companies to provide life skills, resources and programs that individuals can lean on, as well as provide a constant means of communication with their supervisors through our technology solutions. TRACKtech is focused on the things that make a difference and helping support individuals.
These points are just a few touched on by Rachel and Ben. Listen to the episode to hear the rest of their intriguing discussion.