Evidence Based Criminal Justice

As crime rates have continued to decline, especially in the recent years, criminal justice policy continues increase, therefore, leading to new social problems, such as a growth in the prison population, increased expenditures, and lengthier prison sentences. Over these decades, however, there clearly has been a cause for concern about the lack of accountability and evidence based practice in criminal justice policy in which is needed in order to justify these new social problems and the significant increases in the criminal justice system. Despite these calls for greater accountability and evidence based policy, a large gap continues to remain between these ideals and the realization of them (Mears, 2010). Evidently, these issues are in …show more content…
As a citizen it makes me begin to wonder why it is exactly that such a reform or practice has not taken place yet. If the logic behind the hierarchy is as simple as it seems, then why exactly had this practice not been enforced yet? Many individuals, including myself, prior to reading the text, simply do not know exactly what the evaluation hierarchy entails, which is quite troublesome considering how simple it is. In order to improve the current situation and better inform policymakers, practitioners, and even researchers, certain essentials of the evaluation research can be taught or acquired. According to a number of scholarly articles, a number of strategies can be used, in even the most modest of fashion, and come to produce large improvements (Mears, …show more content…
Although there are criticisms, in which have merit, associated with the idea of a independent and autonomous criminal justice research agency, I find the ideas expressed by Mears (2010) to be important to the future success of criminal justice policy. Oftentimes, policies tend to be enforced without logical reasoning or empirical evidence to support the reasoning behind them in the first place. If an unbiased party, who is well trained in conducting experiments and analyses, were to independently take control of policymaking we would not only know who was accountable for the policies that were being passed, but we would also know why it is exactly that they are trying to pass the policies as they would be required to enlist evidence to support their findings. Through continuously taking part in developing these policies, such an agency would be able to develop a bank of knowledge about effective and ineffective policies, in which would allow, for example, the range of impacts associated with policies to documented; numerous gaps in