Swift Certain Fair Workshops Kick-off in Malibu and D.C.
The Pepperdine School of Public Policy’s Swift Certain Fair (SCF) Resource Center launched this summer with two successful workshops at the University’s Malibu and Washington, D.C. campuses. The SCF Center provides targeted training and technical assistance to jurisdictions implementing SCF in community supervision; these inaugural regional workshops were a general introduction to SCF, for audiences of practitioners from various criminal-justice agencies, policymakers, researchers, and journalists.
Dr. Angela Hawken, associate professor of public policy and James Q. Wilson Fellow, and Dr. Jonathan Kulick, senior project director, at the School of Public Policy led the workshops with presentations and panels featuring many of the SCF Center’s team of expert practitioner-consultants from around the country, including Judge Steven Alm, the founder of HOPE probation, and Bernie Warner, secretary of the Washington State Department of Corrections, with the largest statewide SCF implementation. Topics included SCF principles and operations; research findings; administration, coordination, and leadership; and data, evaluation, and fidelity monitoring. The Malibu workshop had participants from eight states and Australia, and the D.C. workshop from nine states and several federal-government offices.
Interest in SCF is growing rapidly; the SCF Center provides free technical assistance, with support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, to jurisdictions and agencies in more than a dozen states and an Indian nation, and is fielding requests for assistance from many more. Hawken notes that “swiftness, certainty, fairness, and transparency are essential if a criminal-justice system is to be, in fact, just. The Center helps to improve the delivery of supervision, for less crime and less punishment.”
The SCF Center will be facilitating additional workshops in the near future. Please visit the SCF Resource Center website for updates.