Our Work

ARS will serve as the evaluator and research partner for the City of Refuge Reentry HUB, a multifaceted compendium of services designed to assist individuals returning from a period of incarceration and their families to more successfully navigate the many challenges associated with the reentry process. This work is funded through a United States Department of Justice (DOJ) Second Chance Act Community-based Reentry Program Award.

ARS will serve as the evaluator and research partner working alongside the Fulton County Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities to study the expansion of the Atlanta/Fulton County Policing Alternatives and Diversion (PAD) Initiative. Designed to provide alternatives to arrest and booking of persons with behavioral health issues, The PAD initiative follows the format of the pioneering Law Enforcement Aided Diversion (LEAD) program in Seattle, Washington. This work is funded through a DOJ Office of Justice Programs Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Abuse Program (COSSAP) award.

ARS is a partner in Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research (APPR), dedicated to achieving fair, just and effective pretrial practices, every day, throughout the nation. Led by the Center for Effective Public Policy, APPR is a project of the National Partnership for Pretrial Justice made possible through a generous grant from Arnold Ventures.

ARS provides evaluation research and consultation to the Cobb County Office of the District Attorney’s federally funded Opioid Fatality Review (OFR) panel, the county’s efforts to address the heroin and opioid problem by thoroughly investigating overdose deaths. We also completed an in-depth investigation of the heroin and opioid issue in Fulton County and the northern Atlanta suburbs, documenting the nature and extent of heroin and opioid use and impacts in the “heroin triangle”.

ARS led a national team bringing violence prevention and environmental design together to enhance campus sexual assault prevention efforts. Download the free toolkit here: Enhancing Campus Sexual Assault Prevention Efforts Through Situational Interventions.

ARS provides participatory, action-oriented evaluation services to an agency combatting human trafficking, documenting their work providing direct services to survivors of human trafficking as well as educating law enforcement, court personnel, service providers, and the general public on issues related to human trafficking and domestic violence.

ARS is using jail and other data to gain an understanding of the number and characteristics of frequent service utilizers in Fulton County, Georgia. We are also studying selected jails in the state in an effort to to assess the prevalence of mental health cases cycling through five jails. The goal is to connect serious and persistent mental health inmates with Medicaid resources to fund local services in the jail or in an outpatient or inpatient facility.

ARS is the research partner for the Atlanta Strategies for Policing Innovation (SPI), Program to Interrupt Violence thru Outreach and Treatment (PIVOT), that provides services to trauma center shooting victims and community policing efforts in neighborhoods most blighted by gun violence. The sharing of local emergency department and law enforcement data leads to informed decisions about violence prevention practices (AKA the Cardiff Model). ARS evaluation efforts activities include identifying and onboarding additional local law enforcement departments whose participation in the partnership would improve data quality and targeted interventions.

ARS works with the districts to identify and develop comprehensive strategies to mitigate gun and gang violence, primarily for their Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) and Project Guardian initiatives. These efforts include prevention, intervention, and suppression efforts in communities most blighted by crime and for people most at risk of experiencing violence. ARS is also helping with educating criminal justice professionals, such as on the impact of trauma and provide effective strategies how to develop trauma-informed responses.

ARS builds discrete-event simulation models to provide jurisdictions with the capability to conduct and analyze different scenarios to empirically test thousands of “what-if” scenarios to aid policy, legislative, and budgetary decisions. Currently, we are working in Alabama, where the states facing federal intervention, as well as California, which is still subject to oversight stemming from Brown v. Plata. Other sites engaged in reform include Georgia and Tennessee. Previous projects include Canada, South Carolina, Missouri, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

ARS provides evaluation, consultation, training, and technical assistance services to problem-solving and specialty courts nationwide. We have worked with dozens of problem-solving courts including adult drug courts, mental health courts, family dependency treatment courts, veterans treatment courts, early intervention courts, child support courts, and a court for prostituted women with serious mental illness and substance use disorders.

ARS is conducting a five-year, federally funded evaluation of the impact of specialized peer mentors in the Fulton County (GA) Accountability Courts. ARS is also evaluating the use of Credible Messengers in juvenile and adult reentry programs in metro-Atlanta.

Funded by the National Institute Justice, ARS is supporting RTI International develop and test a predictive algorithm for the risk of technical violations or new crimes for offenders under community supervision with the Georgia Department of Community Supervision (DCS). RTI will work with DCS to incorporate these tools and interface into the DCS case management system.

ARS has been retained by the Atlanta/Fulton County Pre-Arrest Diversion (PAD) Initiative to study the nature, location and disposition of 911 Calls for Service in Atlanta. The results of this study will inform the expansion of the PAD Initiative in Atlanta and efforts to identify the degree to which non-law enforcement measures can be dispatched to address citizen concerns, and efforts in the City of Atlanta related to a continuum of alternative diversion needs.