NCJ Number
212309
Journal
Security Journal Volume: 18 Issue: 4 Dated: 2005 Pages: 7-15
Date Published
2005
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This article explores current weaknesses in evaluation methodologies in the field of criminal justice and security work.
Abstract
Most industrialized countries have failed to treat the control of economic crime as a criminal justice priority. Additionally, while evaluation of criminal justice policies and programs is ubiquitous within the field, rarely have evaluation activities been focused on the effectiveness of initiatives designed to control corporate and white collar crime. Finland has moved in recent years to prioritize the control of economic crime, calling these types of crimes a serious social and crime problem. In an effort to evaluate the impact of these economic crime control initiatives in Finland, the authors focus on the weaknesses inherent to most current forms of criminal justice evaluation. These weaknesses are outlined and include the difficulties of establishing clear cause and effect relationships between the criminal justice interventions and measured outcomes, as well as technical problems with measurement instruments. Despite the difficulties of evaluating criminal justice initiatives, the authors argue that evaluation is crucial to making sense of the law, criminal justice, and security interventions and should, therefore, be approached with extreme methodological care. Notes