The Swift Certain and Fair (SCF) Initiative provides grants and assistance to states, units of local government, and federally recognized Indian tribes to develop, implement, and test an SCF program model.

The SCF Initiative is part of BJA's Innovations in Public Safety portfolio, also known as the "Innovations Suite." BJA's Innovations Suite of programs invests in the development of practitioner-researcher partnerships that use data, evidence, and innovation to create strategies and interventions that are effective and economical.

The SCF principles are: swiftness—respond to behavior promptly so that offenders connect the response to their behavior; certainty—be consistent and predictable with sanctions; and fairness—make sanctions proportionate to negative behavior. These principles can have a positive impact by reducing antisocial and criminal behavior; enhancing offenders' perceptions that supervision decisions are fair, which increases compliance; and increasing collaboration with justice partners.

The SCF Initiative is strongly grounded in research that shows crime is generally committed by people for whom deferred and low probability threats of severe punishment are less effective than immediate and high probability threats of mild punishment. And a broad body of behavioral research shows that swift and certain rewards for positive behavior can be powerful incentives to comply with rules. Swift and certain responses to probationers violating their terms of probation send a consistent message about personal responsibility and accountability. Additionally, research has shown that swift and consistent responses to behaviors improve the perception that the system is fair and increases compliance.

Given the growing body of research and practice reinforcing the potential of approaches that employ the core SCF concepts, BJA supports jurisdictions and agencies interested in developing or enhancing their SCF efforts with implementation models informed by research and responsive to local circumstances. Since every jurisdiction has a unique set of circumstances, the problem, environment, and resources are different, and those differences must be reflected in design decisions.

The objectives of the SCF initiative are to:

• Develop and implement supervision strategies based on the SCF principles, including responses to positive and negative client behavior.
• Evaluate the efficacy of those strategies to reduce recidivism.
• Increase the number of supervision decisions (e.g., assignment of conditions of supervision and responses to violations of those conditions, responses to antisocial behavior that do not rise to the level of violating conditions of supervision) that are fair and consistently applied, and with consequences that are transparent.
• Promote and increase collaboration among agencies and officials who work in probation, parole, pretrial, law enforcement, treatment, reentry, and related community corrections fields.
• Develop a plan to sustain SCF supervision strategies and related collaborations beyond the award period.
• Develop and implement strategies for the identification, targeting, supervision, and treatment of "high risk/high needs" offenders who are being supervised in the community.
• Increase the number of participants in programs based on the SCF model who believe that the supervision decisions are fair and consistently applied, and the consequences are transparent.