Swift Certain Fair Resource Center Receives $313,567 Award from the Bureau of Justice Assistance

The Pepperdine School of Public Policy’s Swift Certain Fair (SCF) Resource Center, which launched this summer, recently received a $313,567 supplemental award from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance, for additional subject-matter expertise.

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. The Center is led by Dr. Angela Hawken, associate professor of economics and policy analysis and James Q. Wilson Fellow, and Dr. Jonathan Kulick, senior project director, at the School of Public Policy. Hawken is the principal investigator of several studies that test SCF strategies to reduce recidivism and incarceration. She led the randomized controlled trials of HOPE probation in Hawaii and the SCF pilot in Seattle and advised Washington State in its statewide rollout of Swift and Certain.

In August, the Center kicked-off its training workshops at the Pepperdine University Malibu Campus, with a session following at the University’s campus in Washington, D.C. These inaugural workshops were a general introduction to SCF, for audiences of practitioners from various criminal-justice agencies, policymakers, researchers, and journalists. Topics included SCF principles and operations; research findings; administration, coordination, and leadership; and data, evaluation, and fidelity monitoring.