Impact Assessment: A Technique for Evaluating Criminal Justice Programs

Abstract

The systems perspective focuses on the importance of considering the linkage between criminal justice institutions in the program evaluation process. This paper reports on a study which employed the technique of social impact assessment to examine the effect of a change instituted by a juvenile justice probation and court agency on police operations. The change was the introduction of a citation procedure for making juvenile misdemeanor arrests and an arbitration session for carrying out the initial screening of cases. The authors used this study to illustrate how impact assessment can be employed to identify a wide range of inter-system effects. The findings that confirm the existence of impacts can be used to modify the initial program innovation or to insure support for successful innovations. The conclusion drawn from the discussion of the utility of such research is that impact assessment is a technique particularly well suited to identifying unexpected and/or unwanted effects of a program innovation on other parts of the justice system.