FORUM on Corrections Research

Measuring performance towards Corporate Objective #1 (R-15, 1991)

This document attempts to develop a framework for arriving at a common understanding, and an agreed-on set of procedures, for ongoing monitoring and reporting of performance related to Corporate Objective #1 (as stated below). A clearly stated objective is a necessary first step in deriving valid, reliable, sensitive and easily interpretable "summary performance indicators."

Enhance the service's contribution to the protection of society by safely reintegrating a significantly large number of offenders as law-abiding citizens while reducing the relative use of incarceration as a major correctional intervention.

The study has three aims:

• to propose, and to explain the underlying rationale for, a set of "summary performance indicators" relevant to Corporate Objective #1;
• to affirm the value of the Service's corporate automated data sources and to outline a broad-based quality control process to improve on time lines and integrity of data capture; and
• to suggest an approach wherein the regions and the National Headquarters Programs and Operations, Corporate Management, and Communications and Corporate Development sections can make their respective and appropriate contributions to the reporting and analysis of the Service's corporate performance.

The study outlines the essential qualities that should characterize corporate performance indicators as commonly understood in the management and organizational effectiveness literature. In their conceptual model, the researchers propose three aspects of Corporate Objective #1 that can be distinguished as performance dimensions that should be monitored.

These dimensions -- differentiation, time lines of release and reintegration -- are defined and discussed in relation to indices relationships and are reflected on a series of bar charts.