Best Practices Justice Services

Probation and Community Corrections Digital Programming Buyer’s Guide

The Change Companies

Digital programming in probation and community corrections is no longer a far-off ideal: it’s both necessary and achievable today. Agency directors face growing pressures such as:

Increasingly high caseloads and high staff vacancies
Mandates to increase the dosage of programming and individualize it further
Unmotivated and disengaged clients who may be less motivated to engage with analog programming resources
Increased oversight to measure results and demonstrated individualized, well-documented programming planning and case notes

The good news is that digital platforms for community corrections programs are readily available. By embracing proven platforms and strategies, agencies can streamline operations, enhance client engagement, and improve outcomes.

This guide provides guidance for community corrections leadership in developing a digital roadmap for smarter service delivery and staff efficiency: one that sets agencies up for sustainable success.

Key considerations for identifying digital programming platforms

Community corrections leaders may benefit from asking the following questions when identifying the right digital programming platforms:

1. How will this affect my staff?
Digital platforms should protect officer time without sacrificing the quality of services provided, automating processes that are currently done manually.

2. Does it support risk-need-responsivity?
Digital platforms should be designed to be individualized to high-priority criminogenic need areas, and deliver real skill practice versus passive video courses. Engagement for this population is essential for program adherence.

3. Is it accessible?
Digital platforms should be accessible across devices, such as computers and personal mobile phones. The login process should be straightforward for clients, particularly those who may have digital literacy challenges. Literacy and language barriers should also be addressed with accessibility resources within the platform

4. Is it measurable?
The platform should offer streamlined reporting functions that help demonstrate dosage, engagement, completion, and skill application. These reports should be easy to export into case management software and other needed documentation frameworks, and packaged into easy-to-read formats for key stakeholders and funders.

5. Is it secure?
The platform should be HIPAA-aligned and auditable to protect the agency and clients. Real-time alerts should exist to highlight potential client risks, such as harm to self or others.

6. Is it evidence-based?
The platform should be grounded in evidence-based practices such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing and the stages of change. There should be existing evidence of its efficacy in evaluations, third-party research and case studies.

Recommended features to address these considerations are listed below.

Consideration domains	Digital platform features
Staff impact	Unlimited staff accounts Ability to make assignments at the group or individual level Ability to create custom program templates to address population-specific needs, including defining program pacing and dosage, and the ability to auto-enroll clients in programs Ability to send bulk invites to a number of clients at once Ability for staff to “bookmark” clients in their caseload Ability to send custom reminders or resend invites to pending users Live support during business hours and an in-platform help center Immediate staff notifications for potential client risk to self or others Notifications regarding disengagement signals for clients (such as gibberish or unrelated responses) Visibility on key client milestones Ability to send nudges and reminders Ability to report a bug within the staff interface Ability to download PDF responses for client journaling work Progress summaries at the client level that can be easily copied and pasted into case notes Email summaries of daily or weekly activity Training library to support fidelity and best practices Ability for leadership to audit staff engagement
Supportive of risk-need- responsivity*	Interventions and tools to address specific criminogenic risk factors at the individual level Search and filter functions based on risk-need domains, population served, and other relevant topic areas Multiple engagement modalities (i.e., journaling, video and audio resources) to support client adherence and ongoing engagement with key skill/topic areas (Note: aim for a high-quality, comprehensive multimedia library created in-house by the platform provider with 100+ content offerings across a range of relevant topics) Completion certificates are available to demonstrate evidence of program engagement and completion to the court and probation staff Email nudges for incomplete assignments
Accessibility	Available in native mobile app form for clients Read-aloud support for lower-literacy clients Multilingual support
Measurability	Pre-post tests (such as cognitive-behavioral evaluations and the Criminal Thinking Scale) Evaluation surveys for clients and staff Engagement data at the assignment, group, and individual level and at customizable time ranges Timestamps of individual exercise completion Ability to view which Journals were completed at the individual and group levels Ability to download individual engagement data and completion certificates for clients Staff engagement reports Location management and comparison data for multi-site agencies
Security	End-to-End Encryption at Every Layer Data must be encrypted in transit using TLS 1.3 with certificates issued by a certificate authority such as Amazon RSA 2048 M03 Data at rest must be protected with AES-256 and encrypted with key management service such as AWS KMS-managed keys Secrets, credentials, and service accounts must be isolated per environment and governed by least-privilege IAM roles. Zero-Trust Authentication & Federated SSO Utilizes Auth0 OIDC/SAML or comparable protocols for enterprise single sign-on, enforcing zero-trust access controls. Tokens must be signed and encrypted (RSA-OAEP-256 + JWE) and verified against trusted JWKS endpoints. Session management and identity workflows must comply with HIPAA and SOC 2 guidelines. Tamper-Evident Event Logging Infrastructure and application logs must be immutable, time-stamped, and encrypted, preserving complete audit trails. Log access must be restricted through the same IAM and KMS policies that protect application data. Defense-in-Depth Platform must operate in isolated VPCs and private subnets protecting all workloads. Containers must run with read-only file systems and scoped IAM permissions. CI/CD pipelines must enforce signed image attestations to prevent unauthorized deployments.
Evidence-based	Provider has 25+ years of delivering solutions to community corrections agencies, with strong referrals from similar agencies Provider can show case studies, third-party research and evaluation summaries of the intervention platform, including evidence of recidivism reduction and case plan achievement Adheres to clear fidelity standards; with staff trainings on the underlying evidence-based practice offered to support high-fidelity implementation Incorporates evidence-based underpinnings, including: - Motivational interviewing-informed psychoeducation and reflective questions - Cognitive-behavioral skill-building opportunities - Acknowledgement of the stages of change model to address individuals at varying levels of readiness

*Important course/curriculum topics to include for a comprehensive risk-need-responsive digital resource:

Cognitive-behavioral skill-building/criminal thinking patterns
Peer relationships
Anger management
Substance use education
Medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD)
Financial literacy
Job readiness
Parenting/family
Emotional self-regulation
Trauma education
Mental health education
Crime-specific resources (e.g., domestic violence, impaired driving)

Discover Atlas

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Common Pitfalls

While many evidence-based, cognitive-behavioral based tools exist in the community corrections space, there are others that will not pass the litmus test above. These include:

Generic LMS / compliance video libraries

Why it’s a miss: LMS course libraries often provide passive content but do not create opportunities for cognitive-behavioral skill practice; further, they do not effectively map risk-need-responsivity domain results onto effective interventions with adequate levels of dosage and duration.

Digitized paperwork (PDF uploads, static forms)

Why it’s a miss: Printable worksheets or digitally fillable forms generally lack engagement for clients and provide limited data and insight for staff. Additionally, they are often limited in their ability to enable skill practice, provide adequate psychoeducation, or engage clients at a deeper level.

Person-centered, individualized skill-building resources are key to guiding clients toward successful outcomes in recovery. Our digital intervention platform, Atlas, can help. Atlas delivers hundreds of topics related to addiction treatment, coping skills, and trauma education, allowing staff to tailor treatment to meet individual needs.

Learn more about Atlas →

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