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Grant County, Indiana

Grant County, Indiana, is located 65 miles north of Indianapolis and is home to approximately 69,000 residents.

In 2009, the local criminal justice system had 3,850 jail bookings. Grant County’s courts and corrections department is known as a leader in the implementation of evidence-based practice. Representatives were invited by the National Institute of Corrections to attend the 2009 “Inter-site Summit,” where a select group shared their experiences with EBP implementation. Grant County is a pilot site for a University of Cincinnati probation supervision curriculum and is currently training staff to conduct and pilot the “Cognitive Self Change Community Model” developed for use with prison populations. Both the drug court and reentry courts have achieved recidivism reduction as compared with control groups.

EBDM Stakeholders

An EBDM Mission

The criminal justice system of Grant County promotes risk and harm reduction by utilizing collaborative decision-making and interventions founded on evidence-based research.

The EBDM team is a subgroup of the Community Corrections Advisory Board. This board, established by statute to advise local correctional programs, has been in existence since the early 1980s and has monitored a variety of grant-funded services over the years. The EBDM team is composed of the following members:

  • felony court judges
  • the county prosecutor
  • the jail administrator
  • the police chief
  • a victim advocate from the prosecutor’s office
  • the director of county correctional services
  • the director of community corrections
  • public defenders
  • representatives from the county fiscal body
  • a mental health agency representative
  • representative from the state judicial conference
  • the director of community programs at the Indiana Department of Corrections

What stakeholders in Grant County are saying about the EBDM Initiative:

This project promises to build upon existing EBP efforts and appeals to my desire to positively impact my community and to benefit personally and professionally from the best technical assistance in the field. – Cindy McCoy, Correctional Services Director

A relatively small jurisdiction can still be innovative and sophisticated enough to protect the public by seeking to reduce recidivism through the use of research-based practices. – Judge Jeffrey Todd

Since being assigned as the chief of police, I have been fascinated with the prospect of conducting business with a focus on a realistic and thoughtful assessment of crime and recidivism in our community based more on real evidence and less on what we suspect may be problems. – Police Chief David Gilbert

 

Harm Reduction Goals

Grant County’s harm reduction goals include the following:

  1. Reduce the use of jail for low risk, nonviolent, pretrial defendants by 10% over three years.
  2. On average, case processing from arrest to disposition will meet ABA standards: 9 months for felonies, 90 days for misdemeanors.
  3. Within 1 year, 70% of victims will report satisfaction with the court process.
  4. Within 3 years, new offense rearrests for probationers will be less than 40%.
  5. Within 3 years, improve housing stability, employment, and family functioning for probationers by 25%.

Portfolio

Download some of Grant County’s products

  1. Policy Team Charter
  2. Grant County Evidence-Based Practice®Evolution
  3. EBDM Logic Model
  4. EBDM Phase III Workplan

For more information on the effort in Grant County, contact Cindy McCoy at cmccoy@grantcounty.net