Prior to the development of the INcite Risk Assessment Application, many probation departments and community corrections agencies throughout the state were using a variety of validated risk assessment instruments. With this approach, each agency individually incurred the cost of those assessments, either in a bulk contracted amount or on an assessment-by-assessment basis. Even with the bulk agreements, agencies often exceeded the original allotment and had to allocate additional funds in order to continue using that particular risk assessment instrument. When doing a cost-benefit analysis of the INcite Risk Assessment Application, it is evident that counties and correction agencies throughout the State of Indiana are benefitting fiscally from the electronic risk tools. Amitav Thamba, the Chief Technology Officer for Marion Superior Court, reports that prior to the INcite Risk Assessment Application, Marion County’s “approximate cost was $72,000 for all assessments conducted on the electronic version of LSI-R [risk assessment tool] for the past two-year time-frame from April 2009-2011. This cost was shared between the Court and Marion County Community Corrections.”
In addition to the expense associated with using other risk assessment instruments, agencies previously had to revalidate their own instruments over time. This resulted in additional repeat costs incurred by organizations for a process that multiple agencies were addressing individually. Since all of the INcite Risk Assessment data is housed by JTAC in one central location, the Indiana Judicial Center in conjunction with the University of Cincinnati, has direct access to the statewide data needed for the revalidation process. Therefore, the time and expense associated with the revalidation process will be incurred at the state level and will no longer be a burden to the local agencies.
To date, there are over 1,700 registered users of the INcite Risk Assessment Application, covering all 92 counties in the state of Indiana. Nearly 46,000 adult and juvenile risk assessments have been completed in INcite since September 2010. In the coming weeks, JTAC will continue to work on additional enhancements to the Risk Assessment Application, including an import of all offenders currently housed by the Indiana Department of Correction (DOC). This import will allow all DOC facility staff the ability to identify offenders in INcite by their DOC number so they can more efficiently complete the Adult Re-Entry Tool on offenders being released from incarceration.
