From principle to practice: Introducing the Correctional Program Assessment Inventory to UK criminal justice interventions. Eurocrim 2013, 13th annual conference of the European Society of Criminology, Budapest, Hungary, 4-7 September 2013.

There is now a vast body of consistent, rigorously tested statistical evidence that supports the importance of the risk, need and responsivity (RNR) principles in delivering effective interventions (Andrews & Bonta, 2010). However, the principles are often misunderstood and misapplied in practice, resulting in deficits in programme delivery and in many cases a professional resistance to the RNR framework. The Correctional Program Assessment Inventory (CPAI) (Gendreau & Andrews, 2010) has the potential to address the discrepancy between intent and implementation. Through a detailed evaluation of the extent to which interventions adhere to principles developed within the RNR framework, the CPAI enables practitioners to articulate the work they do in terms of effective practice, identify the strengths and weaknesses of programmes and develop strategies to improve their service. Where implementation has been a weakness in the roll-out of promising innovations in offender management in the UK in the past, a crucial strength of the CPAI is that it addresses the quality of implementation, including management issues and organisational culture. North American studies have found a strong relationship between programme integrity as measured by the CPAI and outcomes relating to recidivism, where programmes with the highest CPAI scores have greater measured effect in terms of reducing re-offending (Lowenkamp, 2004). This current project piloting the use of the CPAI to evaluate criminal justice interventions in the United Kingdom seeks to support the development of dynamic, innovative and effective intervention programmes within the proven RNR framework to engage service users in a positive and proactive way and reduce reoffending