Parole & Probation

For the last 25 years, the criminal justice and judicial system have mandated billions of substance use self-help meetings to millions of people who have come before them. Sometimes the charges or offenses are a direct result of substance abuse. Sometimes the primary focus is not on drug or alcohol related matters which are simply contributing factors. It’s no secret that drug or alcohol dependency is a common issue which in part drives criminal behavior.

There are approximately 5 million people being supervised by community corrections (probation and parole) in the United States. Of this population, it is estimated that nearly 90% of these people have drug or alcohol issues as either the direct or contributing factor to the crime(s) committed. Consequently, whether as a condition of probation, parole, part of a diversion program (i.e. drug court) or as a result of family or custody issues, attendance at self-help meetings will frequently be a condition of his or her supervision. In 2015 alone nearly 1 billion self-help meetings were mandated in the United States with no way for those responsible for supervision to verify an individual’s compliance.

Up until this point, keeping track of the offender’s actual attendance at self-help meetings, in-person or virtual, has been a difficult task for community correction officers. The current self-report system has been grossly abused and serves only to increase recidivism. Individuals remain stuck; both in terms of their addiction and the criminal behavior that so frequently accompanies the substance abuse. However, TBV provides a unique solution that can help both the offender, by providing increased accountability and motivation to keep up with their recovery efforts, and the judiciary, by allowing community correction officers to easily verify and monitor compliance with their mandates. For the individual, TBV simplifies the process of identifying, locating, navigating and reporting attendance at self-help meetings, in-person and virtual. For the community correction officers, TBV acts as a force-multiplier, allowing real-time verification and reporting of compliance. TBV’s user-friendly, cost-effective app is a cutting-edge alternative that removes the self-report system, drastically reduces the possibility of fraud and misreporting, and cuts down on the workload involved in keeping track of persons under supervision.

The system is simple. TBV provides a higher level of accountability that verifies attendance at self-help meetings. Through TBV, every offender registers their smartphone which requires them to ‘check in’ and ‘check out’ of self-help meetings using biometric authentication or facial recognition along with geo-fencing and geo-location to verify that they have actually attended or logged into and stayed at the self-help meeting for the duration.

TBV’s unique app is a simple solution to a difficult problem. Community correction officers can log-into the TBV web-based portal to monitor an individual’s progress in real time. No longer do you have to wait until the end of the reporting period or the next visit to determine that an individual is struggling. The ability to spot non-compliance at an early stage and to make a suitable intervention can be crucial to an individual’s recovery.

The TBV app is closely aligned with both law enforcement advocacy and leaders in the substance abuse rehabilitation field. TBV is an integral part of the fight against addiction in our country. By assisting both the community correction officers and the individual struggling with substance use, we can all work together to reduce recidivism, bring crime rates associated with addiction down, and, most importantly, save lives by giving people their lives back.