Oct. 2 -- A partnership between the Idaho Department of Correction and a nonprofit organization, which began as an employee-volunteer project at Google, is helping make Idaho’s correctional system more efficient.

The nonprofit, Recidiviz, was founded in 2018 by a former Google product manager, Clementine Jacoby. She and her colleagues were searching for ways to more easily identify people who posed a low risk to public safety so that more resources could be focused on high-risk individuals. 

IDOC teamed up with Recidiviz three years ago to improve the supervision of people on probation and parole. Prior to the partnership, officers spent hours each month wading through various databases to determine which clients were in need of assessment, home visits, or drug tests. Today, the same information is available on a single dashboard.

Onerous paperwork also took time away from officers’ interactions with their clients. Recidiviz’s tools automate the paperwork, saving additional time and allowing officers to focus on what matters most —their clients. The tools also surface key insights that help officers reinforce client progress and encourage behavior change.

You can learn more about IDOC’s partnership with Recividiz in this video.