American Criminal Justice Policy
An Evaluation Approach to Increasing Accountability and Effectiveness

Examines the most prominent criminal justice policies, finding that they fall short of achieving the effectiveness that policymakers have advocated.

Daniel P. Mears (Author)

9780521762465, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 April 2010

334 pages, 17 b/w illus. 8 tables
24 x 16 x 2.2 cm, 0.59 kg

"...this highly readable book is an excellent introduction to evaluation research in criminal justice. Moreover, because it is written at a fairly high level, established scholars will find it useful in their own research. Ideally, the book would be a part of a graduate course, but at the very least, we should expect our students to have read it.... The book should be required reading for all criminal justice researchers who seek federal and state funding, for all staff of federal and state agencies that fund criminal justice research, and for scholars and practitioners who serve on grant review panels for these agencies. Doing so will lead to better quality proposals, better quality reviews, and ultimately better quality research." - R. Barry Ruback, Pennsylvania State University, Criminal Justice and Behavior

American Criminal Justice Policy examines many of the most prominent criminal justice policies on the American landscape and finds that they fall well short of achieving the accountability and effectiveness that policymakers have advocated and that the public expects. The policies include mass incarceration, sex offender laws, supermax prisons, faith-based prisoner reentry programs, transfer of juveniles to adult court, domestic violence mandatory arrest laws, drug courts, gun laws, community policing, private prisons, and others. Optimistically, Daniel P. Mears argues that this situation can be changed through systematic incorporation of evaluation research into policy development, monitoring, and assessment. To this end, the book provides a clear and accessible discussion of five types of evaluation - needs, theory, implementation or process, outcome and impact, and cost-efficiency. It identifies how these can be used both to hold the criminal justice system accountable and to increase the effectiveness of crime control and crime prevention efforts.

1. Introduction
2. Irrational criminal justice policy
3. A solution for improving criminal justice policy: evaluation research
4. Needs evaluations
5. Theory evaluations
6. Implementation evaluations
7. Outcome evaluations and impact evaluations
8. Cost-efficiency evaluations
9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Crime & criminology [JKV], Sociology [JHB]