Evaluation Partnership Project to Enhance the State of Maryland's Capacity to Evaluate Juvenile Justice Programs: Final Report

• NCJ Number: 232956
• Author(s): Wendy Povitsky, B.A.; Denise Gottfredson, Ph.D.
• Date Published: April 2005
• Length: 101 pages
• Grant Number(s): UM 040310-7573; JAIB-2003-1022; DYSF-2004-1018; EUDL-2004-1322; DYSF-2004-1332; YSPI-2005-1322
• Sponsoring Agency: Justice Research and Statistics Association; Maryland Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention
• Corporate Author: University of Maryland
• Sale Source: Justice Research and Statistics Association
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This report presents the findings of an evaluation project that examined Maryland's capacity to evaluate juvenile justice programs in the State.

Abstract

During 2004, the University of Maryland Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice began a project aimed at providing a model for evaluation of juvenile justice diversion projects in Maryland. The project, funded by the Justice Research and Statistics Association's Juvenile Justice Advisory Council solicitation, was intended to demonstrate the advantages of using a systematic, collaborative, and coordinated approach to the evaluation of one type of diversion project funded through the Maryland State Advisory Board's Youth Strategies Grant (YSG) Competition: Teen Courts (TCs). This project applied a model of researcher-practitioner collaboration (Program Development Evaluation, PDE) to develop a framework for evaluation in collaboration with the project and county-level practitioners involved in managing the TCs as well as the State-level administrators charged with overseeing the grants. The evaluation involves (1) a process evaluation to determine whether the TCs met the standards they had created for themselves; and (2) an outcome evaluation utilizing a randomized design to determine the effectiveness of TCs in reducing future recidivism. The PDE process allowed the TC coordinators and Local Management Board representatives to be directly involved in developing both parts of the evaluation. This report summarizes the preliminary findings of the process evaluation. Despite challenges encountered during this evaluation, the broader aims of this evaluation partnership project were met. The PDE method was successfully used to involve researchers and practitioners in a collaborative process resulting in a clear plan for the evaluation of a juvenile justice diversion project in Maryland. The advantages of using a systematic, collaborative, and coordinated approach to evaluate one type of diversion program funded through the YSG Competition have been demonstrated. (Published Abstract) Figures, tables, references, and appendixes