This study evaluated need-to-service matching using an evaluation framework from implementation science with a sample of 125 adults under community supervision (71.20 percent male, 76.00 percent White, mean age = 33.17 years).
Need-to-service matching is a case-management strategy intended to align service referrals in case plans with justice-involved persons' criminogenic needs. The results indicated that need-to-service matching reached a high percentage of its target population at 81.70 percent. Within criminogenic need areas, good match frequencies ranged from 80.00 percent in family/marital problems to 98.29 percent in alcohol/drug problems. Clinical staff also met the adherence benchmark applied by the current study, which required a 75.00 percent match between individuals' criminogenic needs and the services they received. Justice-involved persons had, on average, 90.46 percent of their criminogenic needs matched with at least one service referral. Over-prescription of services (i.e., recommendation of services that were not needed) was high, with frequencies in need areas ranging from 60.98 percent in education/employment to 82.21 percent in antisocial patterns. Methods from implementation science are useful for structuring evaluations of need-to-service matching, understanding implementation success and failure, and generating recommendations for improving implementation practice. The field would benefit greatly from benchmarks for need-to-service matching evaluation elements. (publisher abstract modified)