Implementing Randomized Experiments

Abstract

Eleven jurisdictions across the country are participating in the Intensive Supervision Demon stration Projectfunded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). The demonstration is designed to assess the effects — and costs — of sentencing convicted felons to community-based programs. One of the unique aspects of the project is that it involves random assignment of offenders to intensive probation/parole supervision or control program conditions. The demonstration will run until 1990, but it has already provided instructive insights into the issues and problems involved in managing large randomized field experiments in criminal justice. The purpose of this article is to describe the programs and sites participating in the BJA Demonstration Project. The details of the RAND evaluation are then outlined, along with the data collection methods and random assignment procedures. The remaining sections describe and discuss the author's experiences, both positive and negative, in designing and evaluating the demonstration project. The author's hope is that the lessons learned from this experiment will prove instructive and help pave the way toward more refined randomized experiments in the future.