Summer paper 1

American Criminal Justice Policy Daniel P. Mears

The Policy Context and the Stakes Involved

A central aim of this chapter 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. Here 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 rep01t that crime is up 10 percent. That would be incorrect. Law enforcement data

reflect two factors: crime and law enforcement behavior. 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 activity, 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. The

first would allow us to determine how many offenders exist and how much crime they commit,

while the latter would allow us to identify the total number of victin;1s 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 includes more than 60,000 households and the

victimization experiences of persons ages twelve or older.

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. 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. In short,

except for the 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 othe1wise 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 Figure 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 probation population,

which has risen from 1.1 million to 4.3 million. Even so, the jail and prison populations increased

at higher rates. For example, the number of individuals in jail grew from 183,988 to 785,556, an

increase of 327 percent. 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 compared with the costs of probation and parole or

various types of community supervision and intermediate sanctions. They also, for all intents and

purposes, constitute permanent investments. For example, once a prison is built, it generally will

remain in use for decades. So, any expansion in prison capacity 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 capaci1y 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 "prisoner reentry." Annually, more than 735,000 inmates leave

state or federal prisons and undergo the process of transitioning from institutional life to a context

in which they have few opportunities for employment and frequently 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. Of

particular 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 9f recidivism was higher than it was a decade

earlier. (In 1983, "only" 63 percent 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. It also

may have reflected more vigorous law enforcement activity. For example, numerous efforts were

taken to target 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 incapacitation 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 evident from Figure 2.6. From 1982 to 2006, the United States increased ts investment in

police more than fivefold, from $19 billion to more than

&99 billion. It increased its investment in corrections almost eightfold during 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 percent, from $36 billion to

$215 billion. Inflation accounts only for $30 billion or so of that increase. 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, 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, while improving, are still uncommon in the context of the overall number

of programs that have received funding." Similar critiques 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 constitutes a profound

mistake with real-world consequences. Society spends a great deal of resources on catching and

punishing as well as treating offenders. 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

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 accountability; 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 accountability 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. 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. Nonetheless, this discussion serves to highlight the many

and varied forces that can conspire against rational, 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. 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.

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 and divert attention from other, more divisive social problems. 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."

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, dovetails with the more general political

ideologies of the conservative governments that prevailed in both the United States and the United

Kingdom during these decades. Garland and o1hers have argued that support for a broad array of

conservative policies at this time was facilitated by focusing 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 violent 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 Massachusetts prison for murder, was released on furlough

during Dukakis's time as governor; while on furlough, he raped a woman. The advertisement was

widely viewed as contributing to Dukakis's defeat. Another prominent example rose 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. 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 of criminal justice policy. Concomitantly,

"get tough" approaches to crime and punishment have predominated. It would be reasonable,

therefore, to assume that conservatives politicize crime and liberals do not. The assumption 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.

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. Media accounts present anyone who promotes rehabilitation as a liberal and anyone who

promotes punishment as conservative. 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 public strongly supports punishment of violent

offenders and that the public also strongly supports providing rehabilitative services to such

offenders. 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.

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 violent crime while on probation, may force policy makers

to articulate more extreme versions of their viewpoints. As the 'Willy Horton example illustrates,

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.

Long ago, Benjamin Franklin held up as a virtue the notion that we should do eve1ything 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 constitute 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. 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,

depending on how they are implemented. That is, punishment can reduce recidivism, but it also

may increase it, and rehabilitation may reduce recidivism, Jut it also may have no impact. Much

rests on the precise type of punishment or rehabilitation and how exactly it is implemented. 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 rent political dynamic.

Specifically, the nature of many political systems, and certainly of America's political system, leads

to dramatic swings in policy. In the United States, for example, the country's crime policy

approaches have changed dramatically from one era to the next, most recently transitioning away

from the rehabilitation-oriented, crime prevention approaches that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s

and toward the more punishment-oriented approaches that have prevailed since. Thomas Bernard

has illustrated 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. 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 improving criminal justice operations. The end result is a costly

transitioning from one set of approaches to another and the whole-doth 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 relatively 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 policies. 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 of individuals released from prison will be rearrested

within three years. Suppose a program in a particular state could reduce that rate of recidivism

to 50 percent. Such a reduction would be greater than many of the best programs. 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 offender 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. 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, further compounds this problem. A dynamic thus ensues

in which sensational 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 ve1y 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, suppo1i 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.

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. The result can be a penchant for responding to the latest crisis with some type of

new, and typically extreme, response rather than to deliberate assessment of the problem and

what can and should be done about it. 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. 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 considered assessment of

the need for them or their effectiveness, but rather from policy makers' desire to provide

symbolic gestures of their responsiveness to public concern about crime. Here, again, it is

important to recognize that such arguments assume a level of political calculation that does not

necessarily 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. Studies typically show that the public supports a range

of strategies, some rehabilitative in nature and some punishment oriented, for reducing crime and

that the level of supp01t varies over time. They show that the majority; of the public views prison

as a breeding ground for crime but that they also, while supp01tive of rehabilitation, 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 rehabilitation 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."

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." 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. Not surprisingly, then, studies frequently

show that the public supports lengthier and tougher prison sentences. 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."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.

Given this lack of knowledge and the complexity of public opinion, 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.

Policy makers appear to operate within a political context in which the complexity of public

views sometimes must be downplayed or ignored. 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. 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."

In a democracy, we expect that the public will should at least inform policy discussions and

debates. 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.

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 A silver bullet approach is effective when, among other things, the following

conditions 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 criminal 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. At the same time, drug courts, which specialize in

handling drug offenders and drug-using offenders, have proliferated since the early 1990s.

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. 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. 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, abuse- 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. In short, two of the conditions for an effective

silver bullet solution 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.

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

l

reduce overall crime or recidivism rates. Certainly, a balanced approach to reducing crime might

involve a focus on illegal drugs. The silver bullet approach, however, places a primary 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

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 substantially 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 comprehensive, 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

prim 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. 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

had relatively little influence on policy. Here, I will briefly touch on some of the major factors

scholars have identified.

The first and perhaps most important problem is the lack of an institutionalized foundation for

systematically integrating evaluation research into 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. 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 rep01ts 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. 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 universities until the early 1930s,

and it was not until1950 that the first criminology program formally emerged. 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.

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. 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."

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 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." 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.” By 2008, more than a decade after that

observation, funding for the agency had increased to $37 million, 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.'' 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?

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. 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. Consequently, the results' of many studies

rest on 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 policy research but also

with a lack of high-quality quasi-experimental research (i.e., studies that attempt to approximate

an experimental design). 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. Frequently, 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. Many policies and programs

that may be effective thus are reported not to be.

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 important 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 corrections became largely the study of social

problems," and so "criminologists paid scant attention to 'what works' to change offenders." 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." 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.

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 wan 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." That said, substantial improvements could be made for

potentially little cost.

Conclusion

America stands at a unique juncture in the hist01y of Its criminal justice system. Unprecedented

growth in this system and in criminal justice expenditures, 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 problems 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, protocols 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 unprecedented 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 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.

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 criminal 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?