The Juvenile Probation Practice Survey enables youth probation departments to gather information from its own probation officers, supervisors and leadership in 10 domains, including court conditions, family-centered practice, incentives and race equity. The survey was designed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation as part of its probation transformation work and is available to any interested jurisdiction at no cost. To date, more than 1,000 probation practitioners around the country have taken the survey.
Probation leadership in participating jurisdictions can view and analyze their staff’s responses in a secure and user-friendly online dashboard.
Two sample views from the dashboard show results from July 2022 through May 2023. Figure 1 shows the distribution of responses to a single question about incentives.
Figure 2 flags the items where responses varied the most, indicating a need for additional training and conversation.
The survey itself consists of 100 substantive items, organized across the following 10 domains:
In addition to the substantive questions, the survey includes a handful of demographic questions. Responses to the demographic questions are used for filters that allow probation leaders to sort and explore the survey results by tenure, role, gender or race and ethnicity. State-based probation departments can also examine results by geographic region.
Survey responses are anonymous, and the dashboard has been designed to protect respondents’ privacy. If filters are set so specifically that they would only apply to one or two respondents, the dashboard will not display results.
If you are interested in learning more about using the survey to understand practice in your jurisdiction, follow the link below to schedule an exploratory conversation.