This report presents topics of interest for organizations and individuals involved with technology planning, research funding, and product development related to the U.S. corrections sector.
The U.S. Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ), through NIJ's National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC), is funding research to assess and prioritize technology and support innovation across the criminal justice community. This report presents the results of the Corrections Advisory Panel, a group convened in 2014 as part of the NLECTC Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative to identify current challenges and innovation needs in both community and institutional corrections. The report and the results it presents should be primarily of interest to organizations and individuals involved with technology planning, research funding, and product development related to the U.S. corrections sector. For broader policymaker and public audiences, it provides a window into problems identified with current corrections practice and possible solutions for improving corrections performance going forward. This report presents the results of the Corrections Advisory Panel deliberations on prioritized technology, policy, practice, and training needs in the first chapter. Chapter Two presents an overview of current challenges facing the corrections sector, framing the need for innovation. Chapter Three presents a map of the innovation landscape, offers a taxonomy of corrections technology and practice, and sketches the current state of the art in community and institutional corrections to provide the context for the needs identified by the panel. Chapter Four describes the needs generation process and provides a top-level view of the needs identified by the panel. Chapter Five presents the prioritization method and the innovation agenda. Chapter Six concludes, revisiting key themes and challenges for corrections going forward. Appendixes to the report identify the advisory panel members, describe the meeting, provide additional methodological detail on the prioritization and analysis methods, and present the full listing of needs from both community and institutional corrections in their entirety.