The principles that guide us as we serve Hampton and Newport News:
We believe in fostering cooperation and information exchange with all parties involved in community-based corrections, to include, but not be limited to, the courts, the Commonwealth Attorney's office, the client, treatment providers, our staff and other criminal justice segments which share like responsibility to forge a therapeutic alliance.
We believe in research supported principles of effective interventions and using evidence based practices in our approach to supervision, treatment and services.
We believe in upholding the rights of all clients and only those rights removed by statute are forfeited.
We believe our work must be fair, unbiased, accurate, complete and honest and that we should conduct ourselves in a manner that leaves no question as to our ethics and integrity.
We believe staff is of the utmost importance in making optimum contributions towards accomplishing the agency's mission and vision and should therefore be involved in this process.
We believe that all individuals should be treated ethically; with dignity, courtesy, equality and respect.
We believe that change is necessary and that all people possess the capacity to change.
We believe that every detected violation to supervision should have a response and that the least restrictive response necessary will be used, keeping in mind that the risk to the community is the overriding consideration.
We believe that in order for overall change to occur within the system, we must foster change within our own agency.
We believe that our resources should be used effectively and efficiently, focusing services and evidence-based practices first on those clients with the highest risk to the community and of re-offending.
We believe that responses to violations of supervision should be timely and proportional to the risk to the community posed by the client, the severity of the violation, and the current situational risk; keeping in mind that we should have solid justification for returning clients to court as unsuccessful.
We believe that the advancement of knowledge is vital to improving progress in corrections.
We believe that we as an agency need to strive to guide, encourage and challenge clients to change in order to better themselves personally and society as a whole.
We believe the agency should be held accountable to uphold its vision and mission and be subjected to regular, independent and public assessment.
We believe we have a responsibility to present and promote a wide range of programs and services developed to meet the legitimate needs and interests of our clients and to facilitate their participation.