1st Edition
The Evidence Enigma Correctional Boot Camps and Other Failures in Evidence-Based Policymaking
By Tiffany Bergin
Copyright 2013
232 Pages
by
Routledge
226 Pages
by
Routledge
226 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Why do policymakers sometimes adopt policies that are not supported by evidence? How can scholars and practitioners encourage policymakers to listen to research? This book explores these questions, presenting a fascinating case study of a policy that did not work, yet spread rapidly to almost every state in the United States: the policy of correctional boot camps. Examining the claims on which the... Read more
Contents: Introduction; Evidence-based policymaking; Correctional boot camps in the United States; Research evidence and the diffusion of public policies; Quantitative models of the diffusion and contraction of boot camps; Case studies of two states; Further analysis and future implications; References; Appendix; Index.
Biography
Tiffany Bergin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Kent State University, USA.
’After 40 years of tough on crime policies it has suddenly become fashionable for political leaders to embrace "evidence based" policies going forward but until we understand how we got here, trust in evidence is an unlikely guide. Tiffany Bergin's rigorous multi-method study of the once promising "boot camp" model for corrections reveals how culture and politics drove one of the most highly touted but failed crime policies of the 1980s and 1990s.’ Jonathan Simon, University of California, Berkeley, USA '... a wide ranging and sometimes surprising account of the rise and fall of correctional boot camps in the United States.' Prison Service Journal
