The Texas Policy Lab is supporting state and local agencies in Texas focused on a variety of system reform efforts in criminal and juvenile justice. Projects include assessing the impact of workforce reentry programs on employment and recidivism, creating dashboards and data visualizations that inform juvenile justice reform decisions, evaluating bail practices, supporting the design and evaluation of new serious juvenile offender programs, and developing new approaches for recruiting, training and retaining correctional officers.
Example projects:
- Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) Data Dashboard: The Texas Policy Lab has partnered with TJJD to create an executive team dashboard to monitor and visually display key analytics in an interactive and customizable interface. This tool displays data most relevant for effectively managing facility and youth outcomes, preventing incidents and delivering interventions that best align with youth needs.
- Texas Department of Criminal Justice Three-Phased Reentry Program Evaluation: The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) provides a Three‐Phased Reentry Program for releasing adult offenders, with an emphasis on assisting offenders with obtaining sustainable employment. The goal of this project is to provide evidence about the impact of TDCJ’s Reentry Program on the transition from prison to work, by quantifying the effect of participating in the program on employment outcomes and recidivism.
Active partnerships:
- Texas Juvenile Justice Department
- Texas Department of Criminal Justice
- Harris County Juvenile Probation Department
- Harris County Sheriff’s Office