Reducing Crime and Criminal Justice Costs: Washington State's Evolving Research Approach

• Date: 01 June 2012
• Author: Elizabeth K. Drake
• DOI: 10.3818/JRP.14.1.2012.97
• Published date: 01 June 2012
• Subject Matter: Special Issue on Evidence-Based Policy and Practice

REDUCING CRIME AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE COSTS • 97

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ReducingCrimeandCriminalJusticeCosts:

 WashingtonState’sEvolvingResearchApproach

Elizabeth K. Drake

Washington State Institute for Public Policy

* Abstract

A series of public policy reforms put into place since the mid-1990s has helped move

Washington State toward an “evidence-based” juvenile justice system. The central

concept behind these reforms is to identify and implement strategies shown through

rigorous research to reduce crime cost-effectively. Using a benef‌it-cost model devel-

oped by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, this article describes the con-

cep

tual methods behind the Institute’s approach to demonstrating cost-effectiveness of

programs that reduce crime within the policy context of Washington’s juvenile justice

system. Evidence-based reforms have been a gradual, intentional process, requiring the

continued efforts of statewide stakeholders.

The author would like to thank Roger Przybylski and the peer reviewers for their helpful

comments on this article.

JUSTICE RESEARCH AND POLICY, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2012

© 2012 Justice Research and Statistics Association

Sp e c i a l iS S u e o n ev i d e n c e -Ba S e d po l i c y a n d pr a c t i c e

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98 • Justice ReseaRch and Policy

The Washington State legislature began to enact statutes during the mid-1990s to

promote an evidence-based approach to several public policies. The phrase “evi-

dence-based” has not been precisely def‌ined in legislation; however, it has gen-

erally been constructed to describe a program or policy supported by rigorous

research clearly demonstrating effectiveness.1 The legislature also began to require

benef‌it-cost analyses of certain state-funded programs and practices to determine

if taxpay

ers receive an adequate return on investment. Benef‌it-cost analysis (BCA)

examines, systematically, the monetary value of programs or policies to determine

whether, and to what degree, the program’s benef‌its exceed its costs.2 But BCA is not

a simple process. As one researcher writes: “Properly conducted, BCA is an art form

embodying elements of law, morality, judgment, and science” (Zerbe, 2009, p. 73).

Washington’s initiative with evidence-based and cost-benef‌icial public pro-

grams and policies began in the state’s juvenile justice system. Since 1977, statewide

sentencing laws have dictated a youth’s sentence when a juvenile is adjudicated for

committing a crime. The severity of the sentence is dependent on the nature and

severity of the offense and the juvenile’s criminal history. Washington’s juvenile

justice system is decentralized; youth convicted of less-serious offenses receive a

local sanction within the state’s 33 county juvenile courts, and for more serious

offending, youth are under the jurisdiction of the state. County juvenile courts are

responsible for detention and local probation, whereas the state is responsible for

juvenile correctional institutions and parole as well as distributing state funds to

local juvenile courts.

The 1997 legislature passed the Community Juvenile Accountability Act (CJAA)

with the goal of reducing crime, cost-effectively, by establishing research-based pro-

grams in the juvenile courts (Revised Code of Washington [RCW] 13.40.500 through

13.40.540). The impetus for the act was an unfavorable result from an evaluation of

an intensive juvenile probation program in

Washington in the mid-1990s (Barnoski,

2003). In light of the f‌inding that this intervention did not reduce recidivism, the

1

Engrossed Second Substitute House Bill 2536, Chapter 232, Laws of 2012, however,

directs the Institute to develop a def‌inition of “evidence-based” in the areas of juvenile jus-

tice, child welfare, and children’s mental health services. The report is due to the legislature

in September 2012.

2 Benef‌it-cost analysis is one of the most common forms of economic evaluation. Because

it evaluates programs in monetary terms, it provides the basis for comparing many different

programs or policies, even those with widely disparate outcomes. Cost-effectiveness analy-

sis, another common form of economic evaluation, also examines costs and effectiveness;

however, program effectiveness is expressed in gains (e.g., number of arrests avoided), not

in monetary terms. Since cost-effectiveness analysis focuses on a single measure of program

effectiveness, cost-effectiveness studies can be used to compare different programs only if

the programs have a common outcome measure. From a decisionmaking perspective, the

fundamental advantage of benef‌it-cost analysis over other forms of economic evaluation

is the ability to provide a basis for comparing a broad range of alternatives. Benef‌it-cost

analysis can determine if a program is a good investment in and of itself, but it also can be

used to determine which program or policy has the highest net benef‌its.