American criminal justice policy
Subtitle: an evaluation approach to increasing accountability and effectiveness
By: Daniel P. Mears.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780521762465
Subjects: Criminology -- United States; Justice, Administration of -- United States
Description: "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 many 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. And it identifies how they can be used both to hold the criminal justice system accountable and to increase the effectiveness of crime control and crime prevention efforts."--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: 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.