NCJ Number
221969
Journal
Evaluation Review Volume: 27 Issue: 3 Dated: June 2003 Pages: 290-315
Date Published
June 2003
Length
26 pages
Annotation
This article explains how cultural and structural factors facilitate the prevalence ("feast") of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in medical science and limit their use ("famine") in testing the tenets of criminological theories and the effectiveness of criminal justice policies and programs.
Abstract
In the teaching and practice of medical science, theory, evaluation, and practice are integrated and interdependent. This type of integration has not occurred in criminal justice. Few criminal justice academic departments deliver criminal justice services; few criminologists are engaged in the practice of crime reduction; and situational crime prevention has only recently emerged as a focus for criminological endeavor. A discussion of barriers to mounting RCTs in the criminal justice field focuses on lack of the necessary skills, lack of physical resources, lack of necessary infrastructure to support RCTs, imprecise definitions, low levels of engagement with the units of randomization, competing priorities, and funding priorities. In addressing differences between mounting RCTs in medicine and criminology, this article focuses on the machinery for ethical, scientific, financial, and service management; structural factors that impede or facilitate collaboration among practitioners, teachers, and research workers in the same institution; the prevalence of scientific and statistical training for the field in which RCTs are used; and the nature of interventions and their outcome measures. This article concludes with suggestions for integrating the criminal justice academic, the practitioner-academic, and the practitioner in the United Kingdom, so as to facilitate greater use of RCTs in testing specific criminal justice theories, policies, and practices. 24 references