Alignment Between Supervision Conditions and Risk and Needs in Iowa Parole:

By Julia Laskorunsky, Lily Hanrath, and Kelly Lyn Mitchell 

This research memo provides an overview of the findings from the examination of alignment between supervision conditions and risk and needs for individuals released on parole in Iowa. This work was done as part of the Aligning Supervision Conditions with Risk and Needs (ASCRN) project, which aims to identify opportunities for improving the effectiveness of parole by aligning conditions with individuals' criminogenic needs and risk level. The goal was to evaluate whether condition setting in Iowa reflected a Robina-developed model for setting conditions with Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR) principles, which includes incorporating risk level and using conditions to target criminogenic needs.1 In addition, this report summarizes the changes made by the Iowa Board of Parole to their conditions in 2023. The analysis in Iowa revealed several key findings: 1. The overwhelming majority of parole conditions given in Iowa are made up of standard conditions that are applied to all individuals on parole, regardless of their risk level. Standard conditions fail to reflect the variations in risk and needs among individuals, and they often do not provide targeted support for behavioral change. 2. In line with RNR principles, individuals with higher risk levels tend to receive a greater number of additional conditions in the regular parole group. However, this was not the case with the special sentence (i.e., sex offender supervision) parole group. 3. Though most individuals released on parole in Iowa had a risk assessment, the majority were not given a needs assessment. Thus, most individuals on parole had their conditions set without the consideration of their criminogenic needs in an actuarial format. 4. There is a lack of alignment between conditions and needs in certain areas, such as substance abuse, impulse control, problem-solving skills, and employment. Some individuals receive targeted conditions they don't need, according to their assessments, while others who show a high need in these areas don't receive the necessary targeted conditions. 5. A significant portion of revocations are due to technical violations of conditions rather than new criminal behavior. Based on these findings, recommendations are made to improve the alignment between supervision conditions and risk and needs factors. These recommendations include minimizing standard conditions, individualizing additional conditions based on criminogenic needs, utilizing evidence-based approaches to address needs, ensuring access to comprehensive needs assessment information for parole board members, and keeping conditions to the minimum necessary to ensure compliance and assist with rehabilitation. In 2023, partially as a result of our work together, the Iowa Board of Parole removed low-value conditions that did not assist with public safety and rehabilitation and shifted several targeting conditions from the standard conditions list to the special conditions list to allow for better individualization.  

Minneapolis: Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice , 2024. 32p.