Abstract
The subject of this work is highly relevant: what are the Evidence-Based Practices (EBP) that ‘work’ in the field of delinquency? More precisely, the editors, Verona and Fox, state that their objective is to describe concrete and actionable EBP solutions to address the major questions posed in today’s criminal justice system (CJS).
The editors have distinct backgrounds, with Verona being a psychologist working in the criminological field, and Fox being a criminologist with a background as an FBI agent. Among the contributors, the striking aspect for the reader is that they are not all academics. Some are practitioners, including a judge, a judge clerk, a senior attorney, and an emergency medicine physician. A significant and unusual number of contributors are students, including an undergraduate, or PhD students. The affiliated disciplines are also diverse, ranging from criminology and psychology to forensic psychology or mental health, psychiatry, and even anthropology and sociology. However, there is a notable lack of geographic diversity among the authors, with the majority working in North America (particularly in Florida).
The number of authors is substantial (79), reflecting the equally significant number of chapters (42), covering a wide variety of topics. It is worth noting that these 42 chapters spread across a relatively limited number of pages (412). After all, it is a handbook. This inevitably means that the chapters are relatively short.
These 42 chapters are divided into seven parts, excluding the introduction by the two editors and their conclusion. These parts are: crime prevention; juvenile justice and early intervention; predictors of crime and risk assessment; policing; the courts; corrections; and considerations for policy changes. While the titles of the seven parts refer to academic considerations, the chapters themselves largely focus on practical issues. This leads to each part being diverse ‘internally’. For example, within the ‘prevention’ category (Part I), one finds, among other things, but not exclusively, chapters on social disorganisation theory, mental health, as well as chapters on crisis response teams, coordinated harm reduction medical teams and opioid use disorder, or human trafficking response.
Given the vast diversity of topics covered, it is impossible to provide a comprehensive review in a few lines. Therefore, this review shall be limited to discussing some aspects, focussing particularly on the introduction and conclusion authored by the two editors, as well as a few chapters related to the Corrections section, which is closer to the interests of this journal’s readers.
The introduction, authored by Verona and Fox, begins by acknowledging a shared observation with the readers of this review. It asserts that far too often, public policies aimed at reducing delinquency and administering justice are built on culture, history, institutional context, and, most importantly, on opinions and political, media, or popular discourses that have absolutely nothing to do with EBPs. The outcomes of these policies and institutional choices are described as dramatic. In this regard, Verona and Fox’s statement resonates strongly: ‘This has produced massive negative outcomes, such as mass incarceration, conflict between police and the community, ballooning criminal justice costs with limited effect on crime, and other well-founded concerns over bias, ineffectiveness, lack of fairness, and potential long-term negative consequences of justice involvement’. (p.3). Verona and Fox similarly highlight the ‘catastrophic collateral effects on human, community, and financial resources; increases in structural racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic bias; and substantial harm to justice-involved individuals and their families’ (p.3). Readers of EJprob will recognise not only the situation in the United States, from which most authors of the work originate, but unfortunately, a situation that is also present in European states.
On the whole, Verona and Fox’s goal is to describe which EBP policies and programmes can genuinely be implemented in practice. In reality, the book not only promotes EBPs, as its title suggests, but also justice in the noblest sense of the term. This dual objective is commendable and even vital, although I confess to having diminishing faith in its success. At present, EBPs and procedural and normative justice are challenged by populist orientations and slowed down by bureaucracy and the McDonaldisation of the Criminal Justice System (CJS). Nevertheless, targeting institutions and practitioners rather than policies, the authors and editors hope to achieve progress at least at the level of practices.
The Handbook’s introduction presents its own conception of EBPs, and this is where I confess that the authors lost me. Verona and Fox argue that methodologically rigorous research, though necessary from a practitioner’s perspective, rarely corresponds to reality. According to Verona and Fox, rather than implementing a programme that ‘works’, that is, an EBP programme according to research, it would be better to understand EBPs as a ‘process’, approaching a problem logically and scientifically rather than continuing to do what has always been done. However, research shows that programmes developed with the support of a research team generally work better than purely institutional ones, and certainly better than practices loosely inspired by EBPs. Indeed, the real problem that has emerged in recent years is not ‘nothing works’ or even ‘what works’ but rather ‘nothing is implemented’ (Taxman and Belenko, 2012: 85). Verona and Fox further lose ground when they suggest that it is better to develop a practice or policy internally, within the institution. This precisely leads to losing the essence of EBPs. Through simplifications, compromises with science, institutional logics (e.g. bureaucracy), professional logics (cultural, organisational, financial, or habitus), not to mention different legal and procedural responsivity (see, e.g. Nolan, 2009), what is implemented too often has very little to do with EBPs. The editors hope that presenting EBPs in a very simple and quick way can overcome the inertia and opposition of resistors and sceptics. Alas, the readers of Ejprob know that oversimplifying what is essentially complex (crime) runs the risk of leading to failure.
In fact, one can indeed fully agree with Verona and Fox when they slightly contradictorily state that practitioners often rely solely on their peers and institutions to learn about EBPs – to the delight of the more closed-minded among these institutions – while academics read and talk only among themselves. However, this latter point is becoming less and less true.
Regarding the Corrections section (VI) of the book, divided into five chapters, I will focus on three of them that are closer to the concerns of our readers.
The first of these (Chapter 31) is authored by Mark E. Olver and Keira C. Stockdale and is titled ‘Correctional Programming: Evidence-Based Programs, Policies, and Practices’. Unsurprisingly, in the corrections domain, the concept of EBP primarily corresponds to the RNR-CBT duo, as well as certain dimensions of Core Correctional Practices, such as prosocial modelling. Olver and Stockdale begin by providing a clear summary of the key principles associated with these models and the validations, including meta-analytic validations, that qualify them as EBPs. The authors also highlight some of the recent changes in corrections, such as the shift from the ‘Risk’ principle to the more descriptive and less contentious principle of ‘dosage’. They also discuss the literature demonstrating the very ‘CBT’ need for extensive role-playing and the assignment of homework to better solidify new skills and alternative cognitions, attitudes, and behaviours. The authors also reference recent literature on the working alliance, which, after all, is the (re)discovery in the treatment of delinquency of the antediluvian psychodynamic principle of therapeutic alliance. The authors then present the burgeoning ‘black box’ literature which shows that while we are no longer in the era of ‘Nothing Works’, we are indeed in the aforementioned era of ‘Nothing is Implemented’.
A blind spot arises not from Olver and Stockdale but from the RNR model itself: that of ethno-cultural and gender responsiveness (briefly mentioned), for which RNR merely confirms that they are issues of receptivity but does not genuinely provide concrete solutions to practitioners. Indeed, these must be sought in other literature. Therefore, considering the limitations of EBPs in the real world, Olver and Stockdale ask ‘Is RNR enough?’ In reality, this section partly emphasises certain RNR principles, such as the need to truly link assessment and treatment plans (in practice, one often has little to do with the other), Core Correctional Practices, strengths (aka protective factors), and the need to monitor fidelity. The authors rightly add the necessity of resorting to other approaches, including the use of validated psychometric tools, thereby not solely relying on RNR criminological tools. Olver and Stockdale also refer to the concept of ‘Offence Paralleling Behaviour’ (which they qualify as Offense-Linked Proxy Behaviours) in prison or other custodial environments. Overall, the challenge of summarising a particularly broad and complex literature is met by chapter 31.
Chapter 33 is authored by Edelyn Verona, Kendall Smith, Michelle Hua, and Bryanna Fox and is titled ‘What Works in Improving Reentry Outcomes? Effective Programs and Recommendations’. This chapter focuses on EBPs in the context of reentry programmes. It is almost extraordinary that research has had to empirically demonstrate that rehabilitation-based programmes ensuring a smoother through the gate transition are more effective than those solely based on punishment. Given the persistence of populist discourses, it is, however, not unnecessary to reiterate this obvious fact using meta-analyses, which, logically, should put an end to any barstool wisdom, flatteringly encouraged by unscrupulous politicians. More positively, these reviews have had an impact in the USA through the Second Chance Act. Admittedly, meta-analyses report mixed results and a modest effect size, but this should be related to the heavier psycho-socio-criminological issues of inmates compared to probationers, issues significantly exacerbated by incarceration. The logical conclusion, that is, to significantly reduce the disaster of mass incarceration and the obstacles to successful reentry (e.g. the effects of criminal records or the gross inadequacy of funding for community psychiatric or addiction treatment), unfortunately, is not sufficiently drawn. In Europe, additional obstacles to successful reentry include mass unemployment, the housing crisis, and the actual availability of good quality RNR-CBT treatments.
Given the moderate results of reentry programmes – still much better than the alternative of doing nothing and letting inmates max out and be de facto booted out with their meagre belongings – Verona and colleagues then turn their attention to EBP treatment programmes, reintroducing the RNR-CBT combination. They are correct in pointing out the limitations of some treatment programmes, even those based on this model, particularly in the realm of interpersonal violence against women. At this point, if there is an EBP, it is solely in the domain of victim protection, and this point would also have deserved mention. Chapter 33 concludes with some general recommendations and, most importantly, a call for research on reentry programmes led from prison facilities for which empirical support is still insufficient.
Finally, let us discuss Chapter 34, written by Alexander M. Holsinger, and titled ‘Supporting Healing and Wholeness: Evidence-Based Practices in Community Supervision’. This chapter raises some particularly useful questions, including who to recruit and how. The authors recommend recruiting individuals with good emotional intelligence, able to treat individuals in a holistic manner, and to establish a working alliance. Holsinger further recommends that probation organisations test potential recruits’ emotional intelligence. He also explains that probation practitioners must be capable of adopting new knowledge and practices. He believes that the culture and practice of social work should reclaim offender treatment, as social workers are capable of delivering clinical treatment. While there is indeed EBP in social work today (e.g. Hepworth et al., 2022), far from the ‘Nothing Works’ of the 1970s, one might not fully follow Holsinger in this direction. Probation practitioners should, on the contrary, be rare birds and, indeed, be both excellent clinicians (in the psychological sense, not just the social sense), clinical criminologists (with Holsinger invoking various aspects of the RNR model), capable of contributing to certain specialised treatment activities (addiction, mental health issues), and supporting the non-criminogenic needs of users (i.e. doing social work), thereby strengthening responsivity, and upholding human rights.
Holsinger states at the beginning of his chapter that the qualities of probation officers are necessarily transferred to the managerial level, with managerial staff being recruited from among the first group. However, this is not the case everywhere in the world. For example, in France, probation managers are mostly recruited externally, often from legal backgrounds, and are then trained by the institution in human resources and management. The issue of management in probation has become central, and research needs to provide better information on this aspect.
The Handbook ends with a conclusion authored by the two editors, Verona and Fox, as well as Emily Torres. It classically summarily captures the take-away lessons, emphasising the need for: evaluating the outcomes of criminal justice policies from all perspectives; addressing the social causes of delinquency; engaging in multiagency collaboration; combating ethno-cultural discrimination; strengthening procedural legitimacy; and further enhancing the empirical basis of professional and institutional practices. Consequently, the importance of strengthening the ties between researchers and criminal justice institutions is highlighted.
The book succeeds quite well in summarising the major empirical findings and general recommendations in the field of applied criminology. However, it has the drawbacks inherent in its strengths. I am not certain that frontline practitioners will find the specific practical recommendations they need. The recommendations inserted at the end of each chapter, while logical and welcome, are too general. An exception might be the managers and leaders of the CJS who need to make broader decisions and, to that end, must be convinced of the necessity of implementing EBPs and have a general sense of direction. For them, as for students, the Handbook will prove particularly useful.