Discussion 3: "Irrational" Criminal Justice Policy
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Irrational Criminal Justice Policy
A CENTRAL GOAL OF THIS BOOK IS TO CONTRIBUTE TO EFFORTS TO
improve criminal justice policy and to do so by showing how the sys- tematic use of evaluation research can lead to less bad policy and more good policy. The ultimate aim is to help place criminal justice policy on a more rational footing, one where it has a chance of providing the accountability and the effectiveness that the public expects of it. At present, and as detailed in subsequent chapters, too many criminal justice policies are ill founded, ineffective, or inefficient, or they lack sufficient evidence to support them. Put differently, we have too much irrational criminal justice policy. I argue that increased reliance on the evaluation hierarchy in all parts of the crimi- nal justice system and in the development and assessment of policy provides one critical platform for correcting this situation and fulfilling the public’s desire for effective government.
This chapter sets the stage for this argument and the subsequent chap- ters in several ways. First, it briefly introduces the evaluation hierarchy as a framework for critiquing current policy. The details of the hierarchy are discussed in Chapter 3, but a discussion here provides a foothold for understanding the context – in particular, the lack of accountability and effective criminal justice policies – that motivates this book. Second, it pro- vides a portrait of national crime and justice system trends, and, specif- ically, the dramatic increase in criminal justice populations and expendi- tures. This discussion serves to illustrate the stakes involved and to highlight the need for creating the types of research that can allow for accountabil- ity and evidence-based policy. Third, it describes some of the prominent factors that have been argued to influence criminal justice policy. This discussion highlights the fact that many barriers to research-based pol- icy exist. In so doing, it underscores the importance of institutionalizing
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evaluation research as a critical part of an effort to place the criminal jus- tice system on a more rational – that is, a more accountable and effective – foundation.
The Evaluation Hierarchy and the Irrationality of Criminal Justice Policy
Imagine someone tries to sell you a used car. Before responding, you may well ask yourself five questions. The first question is, “Do I actually need a car?” Perhaps you do. But perhaps you do not. In some areas, having a car is practically a requirement for getting to and from work. In others, especially metropolitan areas, public transportation may suffice.
Assuming that you do need a car, the second question presents itself: “Is this the kind of car I need?” For example, if you have a daily two-hour commute, you likely would want a car with good gas mileage, so a large pickup truck might not be the best option, all else being equal. Even so, gas mileage may not be the only relevant consideration. If you are more than six feet tall, some gas-efficient cars may feel uncomfortable. In addition, your work may involve shorter trips and carting large equipment from one place to another. A compact vehicle may not be the best option in such cases.
If you determine that the car indeed is appropriate for your purposes, you then likely will ask a third question, namely, “What is its condition?” That is, how has it been used and how well has it been maintained? For example, if it is a manual-shift vehicle, did the person shift in a way that wore the clutch down? If so, you may need to pay for a new clutch soon. Was the car ever in an accident? If so, there may be problems not immediately evident that could surface and lead to many costly repairs. Conversely, if the owner supplies detailed records, including regular tune-ups, oil changes, and the like, you may have more trust that the car will be reliable and that it will perform in the way you expect.
Should you determine, upon inspection of the car, that it passes muster, you might well entertain a fourth question: “What do reviews about this type of car say about its performance?” For instance, are claims about the car’s gas mileage supported? How often are repairs typically needed? Put differently, how much can you trust that the car will get you where you want to go on a regular basis with minimal maintenance?
In the event that all of the preceding questions lead you to believe that the car is indeed worth purchasing, you typically will ask a final question: “Do the benefits of this car outweigh the costs, especially as compared to other cars or to other pressing needs that I may have?” Presumably, if another
IRRATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY 9
car passed all of the previously mentioned criteria comparably well but cost less, you would go with it. Similarly, if you determined that some other pressing need was more important – say, payment for a medical procedure not covered by insurance – you might well pass on what otherwise seems to be a good deal.
This example is by no means accidental. Car ownership is widespread in America, and so such questions are far from academic. Even so, the reality is that most of us make similar sets of calculations about many decisions in our everyday lives. I work in a university setting and students typically need to take classes to graduate. But they do not need to take all of them. Rather, they will want to select those courses best suited to help them complete their major. They also will want courses that are taught well, and they will want to learn something as a result of taking them. At a more general level, by attending a university, they, or their parents, are proceeding on the assumption that the benefits of additional years of schooling offset the costs of not immediately entering the workforce.
Such calculations are the stuff of life and affect even our most mundane decisions. Each week, my son and I go grocery shopping and must select from what seems to be about fifty or more different types of toothpaste. We have determined (or, really, I have) that we definitely need toothpaste. We are not entirely clear why toothpaste helps, but we proceed on faith. We are pretty clear that we need to put the toothpaste on the toothbrush for it to have any chance of having an effect. However, we have not the foggiest idea which toothpaste produces the best effects. Does brand X produce fewer cavities? How about brand Y? Even if brand X is better at reducing cavities, perhaps it is not as good at preventing tartar buildup, which seems like a good thing to avoid. Perhaps it is a draw when it comes to whitening teeth. Is one brand better at reducing tooth sensitivity? Then there is the whole question of how well it freshens your breath. After making many assumptions about the relative benefits of one brand versus another, we then consider the cost of the toothpaste. Some toothpastes seem to do everything at once, but they also tend to cost more, and there is the concern that perhaps they do some things (e.g., cavity prevention) less well than others (e.g., tartar reduction). In the end, I am not at all sure we end up making the best choice. But, the steps we go through – that all of us go through in making decisions throughout the course of every day – involve a logic and sequence highly relevant to policy debates.
In particular, most of us employ an evaluation hierarchy in our decision making, especially if it involves serious financial investments. Indeed, viewing our everyday decisions as policies, and the evaluation hierarchy, as depicted
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1. Needs evaluation: Is there a need for
the policy?
2. Theory evaluation: Is the
policy grounded in a clear or well-
established theory?
Yes
3. Implementation/ process evaluation: Is implementation
of the policy consistent with its theory or design?
4. Outcome and impact evaluations:
Is the policy associated with and
does it cause intended outcomes?
5. Cost-efficiency evaluation: Does the
policy achieve outcomes cost-
efficiently?
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Consider continuing, expanding, or
terminating policy
Figure 2.1. The evaluation hierarchy. Adapted from Evaluation: A Systematic Approach, by Peter H. Rossi, Mark W. Lipsey, and Howard E. Freeman, 7th edition, 2004, p. 80. Used with permission from Sage Publications.
in Figure 2.1, proceeds as follows. First, we assess whether a need for a policy exists; this is a needs evaluation. Second, we then assess whether the theory underlying the policy is logical; coherent; and, ideally, supported by research; this is a theory evaluation. Third, we assess how well a policy is implemented; this is typically termed an implementation or a process evaluation. Fourth, we assess (1) whether the policy actually is associated with intended outcomes (this is typically termed an outcome evaluation) and (2) whether it likely causes the outcomes (this is typically termed an impact evaluation). Fifth, we assess whether the policy’s benefits outweigh its costs and whether the benefits, relative to costs, are substantially greater than those of another policy; this is a cost-efficiency evaluation. The first type of cost-efficiency evaluation is a cost-effectiveness analysis, which compares the costs of two or more policies aimed at achieving the same goals. The second type is a cost-benefit analysis, which compares the costs and benefits of two or more policies that have different goals. In a cost-benefit analysis, the impacts on goals are monetized (i.e., we assign monetary values to them) so that we can make apples-to-apples comparisons between two or more policies.
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Each type of evaluation can be viewed as involving a particular question. In the car example, the five questions are: (1) Do we need a car? (2) Does the theory for selecting the car make sense? That is, are particular types of cars best suited, by design, to meet our needs? If so, what are the relevant considerations (e.g., appearance, comfort, gas mileage)? (3) Has the car been implemented well in the sense that it has been well maintained? If not, we can be reasonably sure that we may not obtain the benefits (e.g., low-cost transportation) that we want from the car. (4) Does the car actually achieve the impacts that we expect? Does it, for example, actually get the expected fuel savings, and is it as comfortable as reported? (5) Is the car the most cost- efficient way to travel from one place to the next or are there other options that would be as effective but cheaper? Alternatively, is there another, more pressing need (e.g., medical care) that, if addressed, would result in more benefits than would be gained by better transportation?
The basic logic of the hierarchy is that we do not typically want to proceed with a policy if the questions associated with each level of the hierarchy have not been adequately answered. Consider, again, a car purchase. We typically would proceed with buying a car only if we needed it. If we do need a car, most of us would buy one that fit our particular need (e.g., a compact car for commuting or a pickup truck for carting heavy equipment). Even then, we likely would not make a purchase unless we felt confident that the car had been well maintained and needed no expensive repairs. We would also be likely to refrain from a purchase if we learned that the car’s performance was or would be poor. For example, a car may be touted as getting thirty miles per gallon, but perhaps independent tests establish that, in reality, the true performance lies closer to twenty miles per gallon. Finally, most of us would hold back on buying a car that performs no better than another but costs twice as much; similarly, most of us would not buy a car when the money could be used to pay for a life-saving surgery that we need.
Needless to say, when we employ the evaluation hierarchy in our day-to- day lives, we may not make accurate assessments, and we may lack sufficient information to make good judgment calls. (In all likelihood, I have been using the wrong toothpaste for many years.) But that does not negate the importance of the hierarchy in guiding our decision making and helping us to arrive at better decisions.
Here is the catch – even though most of us proceed through the evaluation hierarchy in our day-to-day decision making, criminal justice policy typically proceeds without recourse to it. That is, quite simply, irrational. The pursuit of crime prevention and justice constitute critical societal goals. No one wants to be a victim of a crime. No one wants a society in which justice
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is arbitrarily meted out. And, of course, no one wants to expend scarce resources willy-nilly without obtaining some type of return, ideally the most possible one, especially when the stakes are high.
The Policy Context and the Stakes Involved
A central aim of this book is to argue, through the use of the evaluation hierarchy, that many of the nation’s most prominent criminal justice policies lack a solid theoretical and empirical foundation and that the necessary ingredients for holding the criminal justice system accountable and making it effective do not yet exist. I elaborate on this argument in subsequent chapters. Here, however, I want to turn to the national criminal justice policy context to highlight some of the stakes involved in allowing criminal justice policy to be irrational.
Crime Rates
To begin, let us first focus on crime rates. Many different sources of data can be used to examine crime. For example, arrests and calls to the police frequently serve as the basis for establishing whether crime has increased, decreased, or remained stable. Many news accounts focus on such data. If the number of robbery arrests increases from, for example, 100 to 110, a news account may well report that crime is up 10 percent. That would be incorrect. Law enforcement data reflect two factors: crime and law enforce- ment behavior.1 Observe, for example, that a community’s true crime rate could decrease, but if the number of police officers doubled you likely would see a dramatic increase in arrests and possibly reported crime. So, a more accurate news account would say that arrests have gone up 10 percent and that the increase reflects increased crime, increased law enforcement activ- ity, or both.
If we want to determine what the true rates of crime are, it would be far better to conduct offender and victimization surveys.2 The first would allow us to determine how many offenders exist and how much crime they com- mit, while the latter would allow us to identify the total number of victims of crime. No large-scale, nationally representative offender surveys exist in the United States, though a number of small-scale studies exist. By contrast, the U.S. federal government has invested a considerable amount of money and effort into conducting a large, nationally representative victimization survey, titled, appropriately enough, the National Crime Victimization Sur- vey (NCVS). The first data collection for the study began in 1973 and today
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Figure 2.2. Violent victimization, 1973–2008. The increase from 2005 to 2006 is not likely a reflection of a true increase in victimization, but rather reflects a change in the methodology used with the National Crime Victimization Survey, the source for the victimization estimates (Rand 2008:2). Sources: Rand, Michael R. 2009. Criminal Victimization, 2008. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Rand, Michael R. 2008. Criminal Victimization, 2007. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Rand, Michael R., and Shannan Catalano. 2007. Criminal Victimization, 2006. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
includes more than 60,000 households and the victimization experiences of persons ages twelve or older.3
When we examine the trends in violent crime (rape or sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated and simple assault), which typically seem to garner the most concern among the public and policy makers, we see that such crime remained relatively stable throughout the 1970s and declined in the early 1980s, as shown in Figure 2.2. Then, around 1986, it began to rise steadily, peaking in 1994 before beginning a steady decline during the next decade. The victimization survey entails the interviewing of individuals and so does not capture homicides. However, for that offense, law enforcement data tend to be relatively accurate; analyses of such data reveal that the trend in homicides during the same time period largely mirrored the trend for violent crime generally.4 When we turn to property crime (burglary, motor vehicle theft, and theft) – as depicted in Figure 2.3 and as measured by the NCVS – we see a steady decline over three decades.5 In short, except for the
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Figure 2.3. Property victimization, 1973–2008. Sources: Rand, Michael R. 2009. Criminal Vic- timization, 2008. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Rand, Michael R. 2008. Crim- inal Victimization, 2007. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Rand, Michael R., and Shannan Catalano. 2007. Criminal Victimization, 2006. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
rise in violent crime from 1986 to 1994, crime has been stable or declining since 1973.
Correctional System Growth
On the basis of analysis of these trends, we might reasonably hypothesize that the criminal justice system would have increased modestly in the 1980s to early 1990s to address the rise in violent crime but that it otherwise would have remained stable and perhaps even decreased in size. Such a prediction would be wrong. Juxtaposed against the overall decline in violent and property crime has been unprecedented growth in the criminal justice system. The growth in corrections alone is striking, as can be seen in Fig- ure 2.4. In 1980, there were 1.8 million individuals under some form of state or federal supervision or incarcerated in jail or prison. By 2008, that number more than quadrupled, rising to 7.3 million.
By far, the biggest driver of that growth has been the increase in the proba- tion population, which has risen from 1.1 million to 4.3 million. Even so, the
IRRATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY 15
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Figure 2.4. U.S. correctional populations, 1980–2008. Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2009. Correctional Populations in the United States. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. Available online: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/corr2tab.htm (accessed December 15, 2009).
jail and prison populations increased at higher rates. For example, the num- ber of individuals in jail grew from 183,988 to 785,556, an increase of 327 per- cent. Prison populations grew even more, increasing from 319,598 inmates to more than 1.5 million, or 375 percent. That growth is striking given that jails and prisons typically cost considerably more to build and operate com- pared with the costs of probation and parole or various types of community supervision and intermediate sanctions. They also, for all intents and pur- poses, constitute permanent investments. For example, once a prison is built, it generally will remain in use for decades. So, any expansion in prison capac- ity essentially represents an indefinite commitment to increased prison costs. Why? When states decide to expand prison capacity, they cannot easily undo that decision if, at a later point, they determine that less capacity is needed.
Prisoner Reentry
The large-scale increase in the number of individuals incarcerated in jails and prisons translates into a new social problem – namely, the return of large numbers of ex-prisoners back into communities, what has been termed
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50.4%
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0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Drug
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Percentage Rearrested within 3 Years
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Figure 2.5. Recidivism of prisoners from 15 states released in 1983 and in 1994. Source: Langan, Patrick A., and David J. Levin. 2002. Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994. Wash- ington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
“prisoner reentry.”6 Annually, more than 735,000 inmates leave state or fed- eral prisons7 and undergo the process of transitioning from institutional life to a context in which they have few opportunities for employment and fre- quently suffer from a number of problems, including mental and physical health problems, substance abuse, family dysfunction, histories of physical and sexual abuse, and spotty educational and employment histories.8 Of par- ticular concern is the high likelihood that these individuals will recidivate. Figure 2.5 shows the rates of recidivism from one of the largest national studies ever conducted. It reveals that, in 1994, more than two-thirds (68 percent) of released prisoners were rearrested within three years.
Remarkably, after the large-scale increases in the correctional system and the spate of “get tough” crime policies in the 1980s and 1990s, this level of recidivism was higher than it was a decade earlier. (In 1983, “only” 63 per- cent of released prisoners were rearrested within three years.) It remains unclear why the increase occurred, although it may have stemmed in part from a decline in educational, vocational, and treatment programming in prisons during this time period.9 It also may have reflected more vigorous law enforcement activity. For example, numerous efforts were taken to target
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drug crimes, which would have increased drug arrests. Indirect support for that explanation can be seen at the bottom of the figure – the percentage of drug offenders rearrested increased from 50 percent to 67 percent between 1983 and 1994. Observe that recidivism in the study was measured using rearrest. That means that the study included only those crimes for which a released prisoner was arrested. If measured using self-reported offending data, the recidivism rate assuredly would have been higher.
In short, America now faces a situation in which ever-greater numbers of individuals are returning to communities and almost all of these individuals continue to commit crime. The “glass half full” view of the situation is that considerable room for improvement exists, especially given the ubiquity of reoffending among people released from prison. The “glass half empty” view, however, is that we may not be able to make much of a dent in recidivism rates given the commitment to increased incarceration. Of course, it can be argued that incarceration helps society by reducing crime through incapaci- tation or general deterrent effects. So, even if recidivism rates remain high or increase, perhaps that negative is offset by the positive of overall decreased rates of crime. There is some evidence – although far from compelling – to suggest warrant for such optimism, as will be discussed in later chapters. Regardless, recidivism stands as a concern in its own right – few of us want someone who may reoffend moving next door to where we live.
Criminal Justice Expenditures
Putting aside such concerns, the stakes involved in criminal justice policy can be highlighted by turning to economic considerations. Given the growth in the criminal justice system, it perhaps should come as no surprise that criminal justice expenditures have dramatically increased as well, as is evi- dent from Figure 2.6. From 1982 to 2006, the United States increased its investment in police more than fivefold, from $19 billion to more than $99 billion. It increased its investment in corrections almost eightfold dur- ing the same time span, from $9 billion to $69 billion. And it increased its investment in the judiciary – which is required to process the large influx of new cases – from almost $8 billion to $47 billion. Adding all functions together, from 1982 to 2006, criminal justice expenditures rose by 500 per- cent, from $36 billion to $215 billion. Inflation accounts only for $30 billion or so of that increase.10
The burden of these new costs has largely fallen to local jurisdictions and to states, not the federal government. Figure 2.7 depicts the trends in criminal justice expenditures by level of government. The most dramatic increase,
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Figure 2.6. Criminal justice expenditures by function, 1982–2006. Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2009. Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Depart- ment of Justice. Available online: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/exptyptab.htm (accessed October 1, 2009).
in absolute amounts, clearly lies with local jurisdictions. In 1982, localities had $21 billion in criminal justice expenditures. By 2006, their expenditures increased to $109 billion. States’ investments in criminal justice rose almost as dramatically during this same time period, from $11 billion to $69 billion. And federal expenditures rose from $4 billion to $36 billion. As of 2006, roughly 51 percent of all criminal justice expenditures were borne by local jurisdictions, 32 percent by states, and 17 percent by the federal government.
Evidence for Current Criminal Justice Policies
Set against a backdrop of dramatic increases in criminal justice funding and in federal funding for a wide range of crime prevention and crime control policies is the pressing concern that too little research exists to support the selection and continued support of many of these policies. Several criminal justice policy reviews that have emerged in recent years suggest, in fact, that most criminal justice policies lack a strong empirical foundation. A National Academy of Sciences review found, for example, that “scientifically strong impact evaluations of [crime prevention and crime control] programs,
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Figure 2.7. Criminal justice expenditures by level of government, 1982–2006. Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2009. Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. Available online: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/expgov.htm (accessed October 1, 2009).
while improving, are still uncommon in the context of the overall number of programs that have received funding.”11 Similar critiques, discussed in later chapters, have been leveled against many different parts of the criminal justice system.
In various ways, this book will tackle the question of whether the criminal justice policy investments of the past several decades have been wise choices. What I will argue is that, by and large, local and state governments, and the country as a whole, lack an institutionalized foundation for conducting the types of research necessary to produce wise choices, much less to show that existing choices are sensible. The result? Too little evidence exists to support many if not most of the policies and practices that constitute the nation’s criminal justice system.
Ultimately, the failure to use research to inform criminal justice policy con- stitutes a profound mistake with real-world consequences. Society spends a great deal of resources on catching and punishing as well as treating offend- ers. It has spent even more in recent decades. Even so, a limited supply of funds exists. We cannot, for example, build enough prisons to house every
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person who commits a crime. As with our individual financial decisions, mistakes about the allocation of large amounts of time and money can have dramatic affects. They can, for example, contribute to a lack of accountabil- ity; to a failure to identify or implement evidence-based policies; and, more generally, to ineffective and inefficient criminal justice policies.
Influences on Criminal Justice Policy
Given the pronounced increase in calls for greater government accountabil- ity and evidence-based practice, why does so much of the criminal justice system and the laws, practices, programs, rules, and protocols that constitute it remain unexamined and largely hidden in the equivalent of a “black box”? Why, more generally, is there a seemingly large disjuncture between calls for accountability and evidence-based policy and the realization of these calls through the research base necessary to have accountability or to identify evidence-based policies that are effective and cost efficient?
Many scholars have tackled these questions, including the broader one of why any criminal justice policy is adopted.12 In the following discussion, I describe several possible explanations. In so doing, I recognize that any adequate account about the emergence of specific policies or policy trends typically must reference a multitude of social and economic conditions and their interactions with one another over time.13 Nonetheless, this discussion serves to highlight the many and varied forces that can conspire against ratio- nal, evidence-based policy. In turn, it underscores the need for systematic integration of evaluation research into policy development, implementation, and assessment to help address this situation.
Politicization of Crime
One prominent explanation for why many criminal justice policies emerge can be summarized in one word – politicization. From this perspective, policy makers focus on crime to advance their interests. That is, they are motivated more by the thought of political gain than by a sincere belief that crime will be affected.14 Of course, many policy makers sincerely believe that crime merits attention not because of any political gain that may accrue to them but because, in their view, it constitutes a substantial problem.15
Nonetheless, the politicization of crime has featured prominently in many compelling accounts of crime policies. What benefits, though, does this strategy – what some scholars characterize as “symbolic politics” – confer upon policy makers? Among other things, it may enhance their electability
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and divert attention from other, more divisive social problems.16 It also, as scholars have argued, may enhance state power and the interests of an elite social class at the expense of the socially disadvantaged. For example, David Garland, who has written at great length about the crime policies of the 1980s and 1990s in the United States and in Great Britain, has noted: “Crime – together with associated ‘underclass’ behaviors such as drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, single parenthood, and welfare dependency – came to function as a rhetorical legitimation for social and economic policies that effectively punished the poor and as a justification for the development of a strong disciplinary state.”17
Why would crime serve as a convenient target for generating political cap- ital among policy makers and, more generally, for increasing state power? Garland’s work highlights that the ideological rhetoric employed in policy discussions in the 1980s and 1990s viewed individual behavior as resulting largely, if not exclusively, from self-discipline and moral character, not from the social contexts and conditions in which individuals reside. Such a view, which represents a philosophical orientation more than a scientific one,18
dovetails with the more general political ideologies of the conservative gov- ernments that prevailed in both the United States and the United Kingdom during these decades. Garland and others have argued that support for a broad array of conservative policies at this time was facilitated by focus- ing on crime and, in particular, by framing crime policy decisions using the language of conservative political ideologies.
Crime served as a useful target for additional reasons. One is that vio- lent crime worsened during the 1980s. Another is that little political fallout occurs when policy makers focus on criminals. In fact, a failure to establish a record of being tough on criminals can substantially limit a policy maker’s career, as occurred when George H. W. Bush ran the now-famous Willy Horton advertisement in his campaign against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis for the presidency. Horton, incarcerated in a Mas- sachusetts prison for murder, was released on furlough during Dukakis’s time as governor; while on furlough, he raped a woman.19 The advertisement was widely viewed as contributing to Dukakis’s defeat. Another prominent exam- ple arose in Texas in the early 1990s. Ann Richards, a Democrat, ran against George W. Bush for governor in 1994 and, unlike Dukakis, attempted to compete in part on the basis of her ability to be tougher on crime than her opponent.20 Ultimately, she, too, lost out to a conservative candidate who more strongly emphasized a tough-on-crime platform.
Arguments about the politicization of crime have emerged in an era in which conservatives arguably have had a greater role in dictating the tenor
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of criminal justice policy. Concomitantly, “get tough” approaches to crime and punishment have predominated.21 It would be reasonable, therefore, to assume that conservatives politicize crime and liberals do not. The assump- tion would, however, be incorrect. Crime has been and can be politicized by conservatives and liberals alike, as the Ann Richards example illustrates and as research attests.22
False Dichotomies
Whether one accepts arguments about the politicization of crime, politics may influence criminal justice policy in other ways. For example, the nature of political debates, especially in contexts where two political parties pre- dominate, tends to create false either-or dichotomies. In any democracy, policy makers must strive to gauge the public will and determine which social problems merit attention and what should be done about them. Necessarily, then, policy makers must reduce a great deal of complexity to simplified descriptions of the problems and the options for addressing them. Such an approach unfortunately lends itself to creating overly simplified distillations, and, indeed, to two-scenario options – there is X way of doing things or Y way of doing things. That approach neatly accords with a conservative- liberal dichotomy. Even so, it frames discussions and debates in terms that frequently misrepresent reality.
One prominent example consists of the rehabilitation versus punishment divide in American politics.23 Media accounts present anyone who promotes rehabilitation as a liberal and anyone who promotes punishment as conser- vative. The problem lies in the fact that few policy makers hew exclusively to one or the other dimension but instead differ in the extent to which they support both approaches to managing and sanctioning offenders. In a class I teach on juvenile justice, students frequently express surprise that the pub- lic strongly supports punishment of violent offenders and that the public also strongly supports providing rehabilitative services to such offenders.24
On the face of it, the students seem justified in their surprise. How could the public support both punishment and rehabilitation? Observe, however, that nothing about one view precludes the other. Consider, for example, that parents typically employ many different strategies – including a diverse array of “carrots” and “sticks” – for managing children who break rules and, more generally, for socializing them into the ways of the world. Few of us would level the critique that doing so is necessarily inconsistent or odd. By extension, there should appear nothing especially notable or contradictory about the public supporting diverse approaches to addressing juvenile or adult crime.
IRRATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY 23
Such nuances frequently get lost in the policy-making arena, which all too often glosses over nuance and substitutes in its place dichotomies that not only simplify but also distort public views. To illustrate, a policy maker who holds the view that punishment and rehabilitation should be weighted equally may nonetheless feel compelled to emphasize one more than the other. The tenor of a political debate may require such a packaging of one’s views. Recent news accounts about, say, a felon who committed a vio- lent crime while on probation, may force policy makers to articulate more extreme versions of their viewpoints. As the Willy Horton example illus- trates, such possibilities are far from hypothetical. During the 1980s and 1990s, it would have been difficult for many policy makers to be elected or reelected if they argued for policies that equally balanced rehabilitation and punishment.25
Long ago, Benjamin Franklin held up as a virtue the notion that we should do everything in moderation. Following that dictum may not always lead to good outcomes, but in some cases it would appear to be the better part of wisdom. In the case of criminal justice policies, extreme policies con- stitute the equivalent of stock-market speculation, where you sink all your eggs into one company’s stock in the hopes that it will produce fabulous returns. That may happen. However, it may not, and on the face of it, such returns seem highly unlikely. Criminology offers little by way of research that establishes whether punishment or rehabilitation produces the most or greatest impact.26 Clearly, punishment seems like the hands-down winner if the goal is retribution. Not everyone weights retribution in the same manner, however. More relevant is the fact that if our goal is reduced recidivism, the research evidence to date would suggest that either can be effective, depend- ing on how they are implemented. That is, punishment can reduce recidi- vism, but it also may increase it, and rehabilitation may reduce recidivism, but it also may have no impact. Much rests on the precise type of punishment or rehabilitation and how exactly it is implemented.27 In short, when policy makers create or are pushed into accepting false dichotomies, the likelihood increases that ineffective and inefficient criminal justice policies will emerge.
Swings from One Extreme to Another
The false dichotomy problem is compounded by a similar yet slightly dif- ferent political dynamic. Specifically, the nature of many political systems, and certainly of America’s political system, leads to dramatic swings in pol- icy. In the United States, for example, the country’s crime policy approaches have changed dramatically from one era to the next, most recently transition- ing away from the rehabilitation-oriented, crime-prevention approaches that
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prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s and toward the more punishment-oriented approaches that have prevailed since.28 Thomas Bernard has illustrated the problem in his account of the juvenile justice system, noting that, regardless of juvenile crime trends, policy makers and the public become increasingly disenchanted with the current set of policies in place and substitute in their place policies that lie at the other end of the philosophical spectrum. As a result, juvenile justice tends to cycle back and forth between lenient policies and harsh, punitive policies.29 Such transitions frequently occur with little to no assessment of the precise problems, the effectiveness of the current set of policies, or the best mix of strategies for addressing crime and improv- ing criminal justice operations. The end result is a costly transitioning from one set of approaches to another and the whole-cloth adoption of many new strategies that have been unevaluated and that, after implementation, remain so.
As the preceding discussions have indicated, the latest swing in American criminal justice policy has been toward “get tough” punishment-oriented philosophies. The effect of this swing arguably has been and will be greater than earlier ones given the dramatic growth in America’s prison population and the attendant fixed commitment of resources for incarceration. It is rela- tively easy to dismantle a particular law or program. Politically, however, it is not easy to generate support for dismantling prisons, and indeed, one rarely reads accounts where a given state’s prison capacity declines. In the past decade, many policy makers have derided the growth in prison populations, noting that it cannot be sustained and calling for “get smart” rather than “get tough” options. Even so, prison populations have steadily continued to grow.30 One benefit of the situation may be that it reduces the likelihood of a dramatic swing toward a different set of policies. Yet it also reduces the ability to achieve what might constitute a more balanced and ultimately more effective portfolio of strategies for managing, reducing, and preventing crime and for achieving justice.
Bad Cases Make for Bad Policies
Another influence on policy is a political dynamic in which cases that are not representative of most others serve as the basis for new laws and poli- cies. The expression “bad cases make for bad laws” captures this idea. In any given year, atrocious examples – such as the Willy Horton case – exist of the criminal justice system having failed. The problem arises from the fact that virtually any policy, no matter how effective, will include failures. Consider that, on average, and as shown in Figure 2.5, roughly two-thirds
IRRATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY 25
of individuals released from prison will be rearrested within three years.31
Suppose a program in a particular state could reduce that rate of recidi- vism to 50 percent. Such a reduction would be greater than many of the best programs.32 Still, a large number of released inmates would still go on to commit more crime, providing endless fodder for complaints that somehow the criminal justice system is “broke” and requires fundamentally new responses. Of course, if one is going to complain, it helps to focus on the most extreme cases. The problem lies in the fact that such cases not only always occur but also are just that: extreme and not representative of the overwhelming majority of offenders or cases that enter the juvenile or criminal justice systems.
This situation is complicated by the fact that policy makers attempt to respond to the public and, at the same time, frequently must respond to issues as they are depicted in media accounts. So, if the media, as much research attests, is biased toward publicizing the most sensational crimes, policy makers feel compelled to respond.33 The public’s lack of understand- ing of many aspects of the criminal justice system, including the amount of crime and the levels and quality of punishment and rehabilitative services,34
further compounds this problem. A dynamic thus ensues in which sensa- tional cases, not the everyday ones, drive criminal justice policy. Indeed, one might argue that a “perfect storm” of distortion emerges because many public opinion polls ask only a few questions, focusing on sensational cases, and then the media publicizes these responses. Policy makers proceed to interpret such results as representative of public opinion about crime and its solutions, although the findings speak only to public views about a very particular type of crime.
In reality, public views about crime and justice are complicated, nuanced, and highly variable depending on such factors as the issue involved and the nature of the question wording and the response options. For example, support for the death penalty drops roughly 20 percentage points when respondents are asked to express their level of support in a context where life in prison without the option of parole is included as part of the set of options for sanctioning murderers.35
Symbolic Gestures
Paralleling and contributing to these problems is a situation in which policy makers frequently feel pushed into doing something – anything, in fact – that demonstrates their responsiveness to crime as a problem.36 The result can be a penchant for responding to the latest crisis with some type of
26 AMERICAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY
new, and typically extreme, response rather than to deliberate assessment of the problem and what can and should be done about it.37 In recent decades, for example, many new penalties have been imposed on convicted felons, creating a penumbra of “invisible” or hidden punishments, such as restrictions on employment, housing, welfare, and voting, all of which go well beyond the traditional notion of having inmates serve their time and then reenter society as citizens with the full set of rights they had prior to incarceration.38 Perhaps such restrictions were needed to create a more powerful general deterrent effect to would-be offenders, and perhaps they help to reduce the recidivism of the released prisoners. There is, however, little theoretical or empirical research to support such a claim.
These additional invisible punishments arguably emerged not from a con- sidered assessment of the need for them or their effectiveness, but rather from policy makers’ desire to provide symbolic gestures of their responsive- ness to public concern about crime. Here, again, it is important to recognize that such arguments assume a level of political calculation that does not nec- essarily accord with reality. For example, many policy makers clearly want to serve the public interest and do so with a sincere commitment to pursuing policies that they feel are needed and will be effective.
Public Opinion and Policy Makers’ Misunderstanding of It
Reviews of public opinion research consistently reveal that public views about crime are, as discussed earlier, complicated and nuanced.39 Studies typically show that the public supports a range of strategies, some reha- bilitative in nature and some punishment oriented, for reducing crime and that the level of support varies over time.40 They show that the majority of the public views prison as a breeding ground for crime but that they also, while supportive of rehabilitation,41 have doubts about the effectiveness of rehabilitation as it occurs in practice. As Julian Roberts and Mike Hough found in their review of public opinion research on views toward rehabilita- tion in the prison system, “People around the world support the principle that prisons should rehabilitate offenders, however, they do not believe that in practice it succeeds in doing so.”42
The public also tends to know very little about the criminal justice system as it operates in practice. With respect to prisons, for example, “the public around the world underestimates the severity of life inside prison.”43 Indeed, many view prisoners as having an “easy ride” that amounts to a vacation with no work responsibilities and innumerable opportunities to play and watch television in well-heated or air-conditioned housing.44 Not surprisingly, then,
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studies frequently show that the public supports lengthier and tougher prison sentences.45 The unfamiliarity with criminal justice extends to more than just prison, however. As Francis Cullen and his colleagues have noted, for many areas of criminal justice, “including knowledge of trends in crime rates, of the prevalence of violent crimes, of recidivism rates, of specific criminal laws, of legal reforms, of legal rights in the criminal justice process, and of the extent to which the insanity plea is used successfully – the lack of knowledge [among the public] is widespread.”46 This lack of knowledge “allows cynical use of simplistic slogans and policies that respond to the public’s emotional needs but do not address the substantive challenge,” as Alfred Blumstein has noted.47
Given this lack of knowledge and the complexity of public opinion,48 it should not be surprising that the views of the public do not readily translate into simple either-or (e.g., rehabilitate or punish) options. As a case in point, studies find that even when the public believes prison time is too lenient and filled with too many amenities, they do not “necessarily want to make it more aversive,” but rather want to do away with idleness and replace it with work.49
Policy makers appear to operate within a political context in which the complexity of public views sometimes must be downplayed or ignored.50 As but one example, many of the “get tough” reforms of the 1990s emerged from policy makers’ assumption that the public called for such reforms and not for any other approaches. However, studies have shown that policy makers overestimated how much the public wanted punitive sanctions and underestimated how much they wanted such things as vocational training; conjugal visits for inmates; counseling and therapy; and, more generally, rehabilitation.51 One striking example of this phenomenon can be seen in a study of Michigan policy makers, which found that “while only 12 percent of policy makers believed the public would support rehabilitation as a criminal justice objective, in reality two-thirds of the public took this view.”52
In a democracy, we expect that the public will should at least inform policy discussions and debates.53 It should not necessarily dictate policy. Even so, public views are foundational to democracy. For that reason, one of the more striking findings from public opinion research is the fact that policy makers frequently misestimate or distort, whether consciously or not, public views about crime and its causes and solutions. Given the way in which political decision making occurs, such misunderstanding helps contribute to policies that not only reflect extreme and unrepresentative cases but also fail to reflect public sentiment.
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Belief in “Silver Bullet” Causes and Solutions to Crime
Another factor that contributes to ineffective policy is the seemingly widespread belief among policy makers that there exist “silver bullet” causes of criminal justice problems and “silver bullet” solutions to them.54 A silver bullet approach is effective when, among other things, the following con- ditions hold: the targeted cause is truly a cause of the outcome of interest (e.g., criminal behavior), the cause is widespread, and the cause is easily amenable to modification. These conditions rarely if ever hold true in crimi- nal justice, and yet many – although certainly not all – policies take a largely single-minded focus toward reducing crime.
To illustrate, a plethora of laws and programs have emerged that focus on illegal drug use and selling. Many of these efforts create enhanced penalties for such crimes, or for committing other crimes while using illegal drugs, and are widely viewed as contributing to the dramatic growth in the correctional system in recent decades.55 At the same time, drug courts, which specialize in handling drug offenders and drug-using offenders, have proliferated since the early 1990s.56
In part, the focus on drugs appears to be fueled by a belief that illegal drug use causes crime and that it does so in a dramatic way. Notably, however, it remains unclear how strong the relationship between individual drug use and offending is and whether the relationship is causal.57 In asserting a causal relationship, one might point to the fact that many people in prison have or had drug problems or were using drugs at the time of their offense.58 If that were the only problem that prisoners exhibited, the causal claim would be easier to accept. Yet the reality is that the profile of the typical prisoner leads to a host of factors – such as mental illness, homelessness, unemployment, abuse59 – that could be the cause of their behavior, including their drug use. Complicating matters is the fact that, while various sanctions and treatments can reduce drug problems; resolution of these problems is not simple; relapse is common, and many interventions are costly, especially if implemented as intended.60 In short, two of the conditions for an effective silver bullet solu- tion do not appear to be present when it comes to drug-related offending. At the same time, a large body of research points to many other factors that cause crime and to the likelihood that the most effective approaches to crime prevention involve a focus on multiple causes of offending.61
To be clear, there seems little doubt that drugs play some role in crime and offending. It remains unclear, however, whether a largely exclusive focus on drug-related crime would substantially reduce overall crime or recidivism rates.62 Certainly, a balanced approach to reducing crime might involve a
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focus on illegal drugs. The silver bullet approach, however, places a pri- mary emphasis on drugs. For example, when a criminal justice system gives priority to drug treatment, it typically must reduce its emphasis on other approaches to resolving crime, if only because most systems operate within a zero-sum environment in which a limited pool of resources exist. So, if a jurisdiction decides to create a drug court, it necessarily will have fewer resources to devote specialized attention to other populations.
It may be argued that many jurisdictions and many correctional systems embrace a diversified portfolio of approaches, not a silver bullet approach, to fighting crime. In reality, however, priority is frequently given to a select few approaches. Consider, for example, that while drug courts have proliferated nationally, few other such specialized (e.g., mental health, drug, community) courts have enjoyed such popularity. Consider, too, at a national level, the dramatic increase in prison systems, which is tantamount to a belief that increased incarceration, more than a range of other approaches, can sub- stantially reduce crime. Here, again, the point is not that such approaches are ineffective. Rather, it is that much criminal justice policy making is aimed at finding silver bullet solutions rather than at creating comprehen- sive, research-based approaches to crime reduction.
Limited Production of Policy Research
To this point, many of the factors that have been described as influencing criminal justice policy and that serve as barriers to research-based criminal justice policy making have centered on political factors. What about research itself, or, perhaps more precisely, the lack of research, as a barrier to better policies? As a general matter, most accounts – including American Society of Criminology presidential addresses – wax pessimistic about the influence of research on policy. They point to innumerable instances in which policies get adopted with little to no attention to prior research and in which poorly conceived policies continue unabated and unevaluated. Even so, a number of scholars have pointed to evidence that, at least on occasion, research influences policy.63 If we were to average the two views, the situation might be aptly described as one where, by and large, research provides little by way of a positive influence on policy but where many exceptions exist. Assuming that this assessment is correct, the question emerges as to why research has had relatively little influence on policy. Here, I will briefly touch on some of the major factors scholars have identified.64
The first and perhaps most important problem is the lack of an institu- tionalized foundation for systematically integrating evaluation research into
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decisions about criminal justice policies and for monitoring and assessing the criminal justice system as a whole. For example, federal funding for crime and justice research is minimal relative to investments in other policy areas.65 At the state, county, city, and municipal levels, few agencies allot much funding for research, and what funding exists typically is provided for compiling highly descriptive annual reports that say little about the need for or the design, implementation, effectiveness, or efficiency of a range of policies.
This situation is compounded by a second problem: specifically, policy evaluation research – what sometimes gets referred to as “applied research” because of the focus on applying research to policy – traditionally gets short shrift within universities.66 Many factors have contributed to this dynamic. By historical standards, criminology is a newcomer in the academic world. As Joan Petersilia has noted, criminology was not offered as a major in universi- ties until the early 1930s, and it was not until 1950 that the first criminology program formally emerged.67 As a newcomer, considerable pressure existed to elevate the status of the discipline to a “science,” which meant focusing on questions about the causes of crime and not necessarily the solutions to it.68
Not surprisingly, such circumstances can lead to a bias away from policy research and toward so-called basic research. In turn, not only do university scholars tend to shy away from policy research, but they also tend not to train graduate students in the art and science of evaluation research.69 In addition, the orientation toward basic research diminishes the likelihood of developing strong institutional ties between university researchers and local, state, and federal criminal justice system agencies. Notably, when criminology programs first emerged, practitioners held more sway in the classroom, “but since the academic has largely replaced the practitioner in the classroom and in research, the link has grown weaker and, with it, that kind of immediate influence.”70
Even when scholars undertake policy-related research, they typically do not translate their findings in a way that is accessible to policy makers and practitioners. Other researchers have the training and time to sift through myriad statistical analyses; policy makers and practitioners typically do not. Even so, translating sophisticated analyses so that nonresearchers can easily digest them can be challenging, especially if, as is frequently the case, many caveats and limitations bear emphasis. To illustrate, a study may show that a given program reduces recidivism, but that finding may apply only to similar programs, such as those that serve similar clients. It may be that the
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effect was not particularly large. It may be that only drug recidivism was reduced but not violent or property recidivism. It also may be that the effect only emerged when participants fully completed all aspects of the program. Scholars are trained to give considerable weight to such nuances and to stick closely to the limits of what the type and quality of data and analyses allow. Consequently, it can be a struggle to try to discuss the results in a way that runs counter to their training. That struggle can turn into resistance if they feel that policy makers or the media purposely or unwittingly distort such results.
A third problem is the limited funding for criminal justice and crime policy research. Petersilia has remarked that “the federal government is, by orders of magnitude, the largest funder of research on criminal justice policy.”71
However, federal funding for criminal justice research has been nominal and remains so. Consider the funding of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), which serves as the main federal agency focused on criminal justice evaluation and policy researches. Writing in 1995, Blumstein and Petersilia observed that NIJ’s budget “has been essentially flat (with slight declines in real terms) since 1981 and has stayed in the range of about $20 million to $30 million since then – well short of a priority.”72 By 2008, more than a decade after that observation, funding for the agency had increased to $37 million,73 a modest increase but still well short of constituting a priority, especially in a context where federal and state criminal justice expenditures, well into the billions of dollars, escalated dramatically and where baseline levels of funding were minimal compared to federal investments in other social policy arenas. The point was made bluntly by Petersilia, who, in 1991, commented that “for every U.S. citizen, federal funders spend $32 on health research, but only 13 cents on criminal justice research.”74 That situation remains largely the same today despite the dramatic increases in violent crime and in criminal justice system expenditures that occurred during the decades after Petersilia made this observation.75
A fourth problem has been the relative lack of investment in high-quality impact evaluations that rely on experimental designs. The gold standard for impact evaluations is the experiment, precisely because, if well conducted, the results can be interpreted in a straightforward manner as indicating that a program “works” or does not. Most criminal justice policies go unevaluated, and the few that are evaluated typically get examined using nonexperimental research designs.76 The use of the latter type of designs can be problematic because they tend to find positive impacts of programs in cases where the impacts are not real.77 Consequently, the results of many studies rest on
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shaky foundations and so lead to a situation in which researchers must be highly cautious in reporting results. A typical example, created for illustrative purposes here, would be a study in which the hypothetical conclusion reads as follows:
The results here suggest that program X may reduce the recidivism of moderate- risk male offenders but not necessarily affect the recidivism of high-risk or low-risk offenders or of female offenders. In addition, the results should be interpreted with caution given that the study sample consisted of a highly select group, including inmates who volunteered to participate in the study, and given that many acts of recidivism may have gone unreported to law enforcement. Indeed, because the study could not fully address important potential selection effects, the estimated effects of the program may be biased. Put differently, were the selection effects better addressed, the study may have found no difference between the treatment and comparison groups in their rates of recidivism.
A policy maker would understandably view such an account as not especially helpful in making a decision about whether to close down, continue, or expand the program.
The problem lies not just with a lack of experiments in criminal justice pol- icy research but also with a lack of high-quality quasi-experimental research (i.e., studies that attempt to approximate an experimental design).78 All too often, the design of such research is weak, and the result tends to be a situation in which the positive impacts of a program are overstated.79 Fre- quently, too, experimental and quasi-experimental research designs rely on sample sizes that are too small to allow one to detect anything other than an extremely large impact.80 Many policies and programs that may be effec- tive thus are reported not to be. (These and related issues are discussed in Chapter 7.)
A fifth problem is that researchers frequently focus their attention on the problems and policies that policy makers emphasize or that constitute the “hot topics” of the day. In so doing, they ignore a wide range of impor- tant policies and policy emphases. Francis Cullen and Paul Gendreau have drawn attention, for example, to the fact that in the 1970s, a period when rehabilitation increasingly was viewed as ineffective, “the study of correc- tions became largely the study of social problems,” and so “criminologists paid scant attention to ‘what works’ to change offenders.”81 Indeed, this bias was institutionalized through publishing biases: “[scholars] were praised and rewarded with opportunities to publish their research when they could show that an acclaimed program did not live up to its billing.”82 Criminologists thus tended to emphasize the negative over the positive and did so in part because of a political climate in which rehabilitation came into disrepute.83
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Other barriers related to the production of research exist as well. For example, evaluations sometimes take years to complete, but policy makers frequently need and want results sooner. This problem is amplified by the lack of institutionalized linkages among universities, research organizations, and the agencies that constitute the criminal justice system, in part because the absence of such linkages delays access to data.
All is not bleak, however. As Petersilia has emphasized, research can and does exert a positive effect on policy. It has “helped shape the way police are deployed,” “demonstrated the effectiveness of career criminal programs in prosecutors’ offices,” “improved the ability to classify offenders and to predict recidivism,” “provided information about the relationship between drug abuse and crime” and “participation in rehabilitation programs [does not] necessarily [reduce] recidivism.”84
That said, substantial improvements could be made for potentially little cost. In the book’s final chapter, I will provide a discussion of specific steps – such as the use of systemwide, comprehensive performance measurement and monitoring – for making such improvements. In so doing, I will spotlight research-based efforts that hold promise for enhancing the contribution and role of research in criminal justice policy.
Conclusion
America stands at a unique juncture in the history of its criminal justice system. Unprecedented growth in this system and in criminal justice expen- ditures, along with an ever-growing panoply of policies, create substantial concerns about whether the growth, expenditures, and policies make sense. The evaluation hierarchy highlights some of the critical concerns. Have the growth and the investments been needed? Do the policies rest on sound theoretical grounds? Have they been well implemented? Do they achieve expected outcomes? And have the investments been allocated to the prob- lems and policies where the greatest gain will accrue? By and large, and as subsequent chapters will argue, research is silent about such questions as they relate to the criminal justice system’s many policies, practices, proto- cols, and rules. In those cases where research exists, it sometimes waxes positive. However, it all too frequently suffers from critical problems or provides pessimistic or equivocal assessments.
This situation is cause for particular concern, especially given the unprece- dented growth in the size and costs of the American criminal justice system and the more than 735,000 prisoners released back into society annually, more than two-thirds of whom will recidivate. The very real possibility exists
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that this growth and the many policies enacted in recent decades have done little to make the public safer or as safe as might be possible with investments in other approaches to crime control and prevention.
Juxtaposed against this situation is a context in which myriad forces – such as the politicization of crime and the belief in silver bullet solutions to crime – lead to continued creation of and investment in criminal justice policies that may not be the most effective or efficient. Policies will always result from a constellation of factors. Nonetheless, efforts to make criminal justice more accountable or to place it on a more evidence-based foundation will not likely succeed without more and better research. What is needed is a systematic approach to developing, monitoring, and assessing criminal justice policy. That approach is the focus of the next chapter.
Discussion Questions
What have been the prominent crime and criminal justice system trends in recent decades?
What are the risks of adopting unnecessary, ineffective, or inefficient crim- inal justice policies?
How can greater government accountability or reliance on evidence-based criminal justice policies be achieved?
What factors influence the creation of criminal justice policies, and which ones matter the most? Why?
What role can evaluation research play in contributing to accountability in the criminal justice system and to more effective and efficient policies?
