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Gender-Responsive Policy & Practice Assessment (GRPPA)

What is the GRPPA?

The GRPPA outlines the process of evaluating the gender-responsiveness of policies and programs for women and how to use those outcomes to drive enhancements to women’s programming.

The Gender-Responsive Policy & Practice Assessment (GRPPA) is a process designed to guide assessment of research-based, gender-responsive policies and practices in jails, prisons, and community corrections programs for women.

There are two main sections of the GRPPA:

  • The GRPPA Description and Instructions section provides information on how to facilitate an assessment of current gender-responsive practices in community corrections programs and correctional facilities. It also outlines the five domains that will be assessed using the GRPPA Instrument.
  • The GRPPA Scoring Instrument provides the assessment domains and related areas to be assessed. This Instrument is the document where scores are recorded for each domain, with questions within each domain that can help guide the scoring decisions. It is also used to record what information was gathered or reviewed and to note areas where observations were made pertaining to each domain.

The GRPPA requires a collective effort from a team of corrections professionals to work together in determining how gender-responsive a facility or program currently is. It is also intended as the first step in a more substantial process to understand the current facility, program policies, and practices so that reforms and/or enhancements can be planned. Improving outcomes for justice-involved women is the primary purpose of this work. Templates for action plans are provided to help agencies move toward improving or changing current practices toward those that are more gender-responsive.

How was the GRPPA developed?

The GRPPA development process included a review of the assessment strategies in the Gender-Responsive Program Assessment tool, developed by the Center for Gender and Justice, and the Gender-Informed Practice Assessment, developed by the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) in partnership with the Center for Effective Public Policy. The GRPPA was based on the fundamental elements of quality programming, including the guiding principles from Gender-Responsive Strategies: Research, Practice, and Guiding Principles for Women Offenders Report (Bloom, Owen, & Covington, 2003), published by the National Institute of Corrections.