Smoothing Re-Entry: Alameda County Keeps Probation Clients Top of Mind
In California, the Alameda County Probation Department is embracing a client-focused, outcome-oriented mindset to better support previously incarcerated individuals as they rebuild their lives.
By Jeremy Gantz
Every year, more than 600,000 people are released from state and federal prisons across the country. Half are reincarcerated within three years. This stark recidivism rate reflects the reality that many people who were previously incarcerated can’t find the jobs and housing they need to successfully re-enter communities. Probation departments often act as a bridge, connecting returnees with the crucial support and resources they need to move their lives forward.
In California, the Alameda County Probation Department (ACPD) views the wraparound services and “continuity of care” it offers returnees as core to its mission. Many people with eligible felonies leaving California state prisons are now supervised by local governments, due to reform legislation passed in 2011. At any given moment, ACPD, which encompasses Oakland and other East Bay communities, supports over 5,000 clients, 86% of whom are male and 46% of whom are Black.
The agency can be a big driver of economic mobility and housing stability if it offers the right mix of re-entry support services in the right ways to people with prior justice system involvement. In 2022, ACPD launched an effort to overhaul its service hub with client needs front and center, after realizing the site hadn’t reached its full potential. The project, which concluded in December 2023, also trained staff on active contract management to improve service utilization and returnee outcomes, was part of the Opportunity Accelerator (OA), a collaborative initiative led by Results for America which helped government use data to reduce racial disparities and promote economic mobility.
“People often focus on the law enforcement piece of probation, compliance,” says Adrienne Chambers, Deputy Chief Probation Officer of Re-Entry Services & Adult Court Services at ACPD. “But it’s so much more than that — it’s the social service element as well. What we’re seeing here is the evolution of probation.”
Change at the CORE
The centerpiece of ACPD’s support services strategy is the Center of Reentry Excellence (CORE). The mission of the “one-stop” in-person center, which first opened in 2021, is to remove barriers to re-entry by connecting clients to job training, housing, healthcare and other targeted support resources. Over time, however, ACPD staff realized that CORE’s location — inside the ACPD office building — was itself a barrier due to stigmas associated with being on probation.
“CORE was always intended to be a community center,” says Corrine Lee, Probation Re-entry Services Coordinator at ACPD. “But having it housed in the probation building was limiting. The reality is that some people weren’t comfortable going into that space.”
At the same time, Lee and other staff members realized that CORE’s services and client experience could be better aligned to individuals’ needs and preferences. With support from the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab (an OA collaborative organization), the department conducted nearly two dozen group and individual feedback sessions with probation officers, service providers and especially clients. Some had experience with CORE, while others didn’t.
“We were very intentional about soliciting feedback from clients,” ACPD Reentry Services Coordinator Janene Grigsby says. “In order to do this work right, you have to engage with end users.”
In May 2023, ACPD opened a new CORE space that feels welcoming, even homey, rather than bureaucratic and institutional. To create a welcoming, safe space, Rubicon Programs in partnership with ACPD utilized design choices such as warm lighting and open sightlines, and avoided the use of metal detectors and security cameras. These design choices coupled with ACPD’s use of feedback gained from the focus group sessions help to ensure the space is not only welcoming but the support services offered at the CORE are in line with the needs and wants of the members who use the CORE.
Clients are thrilled, Lee says. “Sometimes they say, “Wait, you really listened?” And I say, ‘Yes, the reason why we have this is because you asked for it.’ Our clients feel cared for.”
The new space and an entirely new satellite location are run by a new ACPD contractor: Rubicon Programs, which responded to a new RFP that integrated requirements based on key findings from stakeholder feedback sessions. The new contract requires Rubicon to track and gather data that can demonstrate clients are getting the services they need to rebuild their lives.
Data-Informed Collaboration
As ACPD seeks to make its reentry support services more proactive and outcome-oriented, the department is similarly retooling its contract management practices.
“Before it was like, ‘Congratulations, you have an ACPD contract. Good luck and godspeed,’” Lee says. “But now we’re continually focused on the needs of clients. That gets us to a place where we can have more transparent conversations with providers about outcomes and improvements.”
Instead of viewing contract management as a back-office function focused on compliance, ACPD is embracing active contract management (ACM). It starts with contract language. The new CORE contract defines targeted outcomes and key performance metrics, including the number of CORE site visits and the rate of enrollment in on-site services. It also includes language about ACM practices, such as monthly data-grounded meetings to review metrics, track progress and discuss possible actions to drive improvements.
Procurement and contracting practices are a critical way to ensure that governments meet community needs, says Jennifer Park, executive director of OA. “By incentivizing service providers to deliver equitable outcomes, government can center the wellbeing of targeted populations,” she says.
The larger aim of monthly meetings with contractors is to build a working relationship centered on achieving common CORE goals. These include providing a welcoming space that acts as a beacon for re-entry and community engagement, and offers a variety of resources to meet people’s diverse needs.
The reality is that meeting those needs requires dynamic service delivery — and that requires capturing client needs data on an ongoing basis. “Right now, we really don’t have great data about clients’ needs and outcomes,” Grigsby says. “So going forward, we’re building the responsibility into our contracts to make sure we are better able to understand how best to support our clients.”
As the scope and quality of CORE client-related data expands and improves, success metrics will be iteratively defined and refined to drive continual service improvements. Ultimately, ACPD hopes to be able to connect the dots between CORE services received and client outcomes, so that offerings and delivery can be optimized.
The potential impacts are life-altering — the difference between someone staying out of the criminal justice system, and re-offending. “The goal for me,” says Grigsby, “is to catch the people who might otherwise fall through the cracks. If we change policies appropriately, we can change outcomes.”
The hope is that the CORE project will also spark change across ACPD and other parts of Alameda county government, helping to establish a new ACM normal. That’s already happening, says Gina Temporal, ACPD’s Contracts Administrative Manager.
“The CORE contract management plan has helped us transform the way we do RFPs moving forward. But it’s also helped me have conversations with the fiscal department about viewing contracts as more than just a piece of a budget,” she says. Temporal hopes a new normal can cascade out to the Alameda County General Services Agency, which oversees procurement for the majority of Alameda County government agencies.
“So this is not only impacting the lives of CORE clients — it could impact the county as a whole,” she adds.
The Opportunity Accelerator is a collaborative initiative — led by Results for America and in collaboration with the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University, Code for America, the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab, and the W. Haywood Burns Institute — that supports government in promoting economic mobility, reducing racial disparities, and improving the wellbeing of their residents. The Opportunity Accelerator was funded by Blue Meridian Partners from July 2020 to December 2023.
