Anne L. Schneider

Social Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy.

We argue that the social construction of target populations is an important, albeit overlooked, political phenomenon that should take its place in the study of public policy by political scientists. The theory contends that social constructions influence the policy agenda and the selection of policy tools, as well as the rationales that legitimate policy choices. Constructions become embedded in policy as messages that are absorbed by citizens and affect their orientations and participation. The theory is important because it helps explain why some groups are advantaged more than others independently of traditional notions of political power and how policy designs reinforce or alter such advantages. An understanding of social constructions of target populations augments conventional hypotheses about the dynamics of policy change, the determination of beneficiaries and losers, the reasons for differing levels and types of participation among target groups, and the role of policy in democracy.

Improving Implementation Through Framing Smarter Statutes

Statutory design is the source of many problems encountered in implementation, yet policy scholars have not made much headway in providing coherent and consistent advice for framing smarter statutes. There is a great deal of disagreement about how much discretion statutes should leave to implementers, and four distinct and conflicting schools of thought have emerged. This article advises that none of the perspectives is always correct and patterns for allocating discretion should take into account the implementation context. Contexts vary from statute to statute and may change for different policy elements within particular policies. The core elements in policy content are identified and linked in a scheme that is more comprehensive and relevant to policy results than previous work. The article also provides a ‘value-added’ conception of implementation in which the extent of discretion exercised by implementers is measured by changes they make in the core elements of policy.

Public-Private Partnerships in the U.S. Prison System

Prison policy is fundamentally different from virtually all other policy arenas in that prisons deliver punishment, rather than benefits, costs, or regulations. Within a prison, every aspect of an inmates life is disciplined and subject to enhanced punishment at the discretion of guards and other personnel. Thus, special issues are raised when considering the appropriate role of the private sector in the management or ownership of prisons. Drawing from a theory of policy design, this study traces the emergence, demise, and reemergence of private involvement in prisons. Driven by hopes of creating prisons that could be self-sufficient, or even profitable, public officials periodically have turned to private entrepreneurs to build and manage these institutions. The study examines the claims made for and against private prisons including the “script” that purports to account for their reemergence in the 1990s and the empirical studies that have focused on costs and benefits of various types of public-private partnerships.

Policy Implications of Using Significance Tests in Evaluation Research

Significance tests have certain normative implications that are not commonly recognized and present serious complications for evaluation research. One of the conclusions reached in this article is that evaluators often make normative decisions, albeit unintentionally, when they use the traditional .05 significance level in studies with small numbers of cases. Another conclusion, however, is that evaluators cannot abandon significance tests, but should use and interpret them differently than in conventional social science research.

Why do Some Boundary Organizations Result in New Ideas and Practices and Others only Meet Resistance? Examples From Juvenile Justice

This study compares two federal grants, both from the same agency and both utilizing a national “boundary organization,” to assess how and why one was better able than the other to integrate divergent perspectives and produce new approaches to juvenile justice in multiple local jurisdictions. Results confirm the utility of boundary organizations but also show that not all organizations that bring together divergent perspectives necessarily result in anything new or better. Four factors stand out: (a) a different philosophy of evaluation research, (b) the grass-roots emergence of an inclusive rationale for the program that was orthogonal to the traditional “treatment versus punishment” ideology, (c) management strategies and agenda-setting arrangements at meetings that facilitated horizontal, upward, and downward information exchange, and (d) a different approach to knowledge and knowledge production that emphasized user-defined knowledge needs and diverse research methods. The case studies provide a wide range of insights for collaborative management practices, research—practitioner relationships, and implementation success.

Victim-Offender Mediation: A Survey of Program Characteristics and Perceptions of Effectiveness

Victim-offender mediation as a dispositional alternative is a fairly recent addition to the juvenile justice system. The number of mediation programs has been increasing during the past decade, but little is evident about the design and implementation of these programs. This article reports findings from a survey of 240 juvenile justice organizations in the United States. Program designs, goals, and perceptions of effectiveness are discussed.

Further exploration of the flight from discretion: The role of risk/need instruments in probation supervision decisions.

Abstract Quantitative decision models increasingly are replacing human judgment and discretion in criminal justice decision making. Some view this change positively, as they believe discretion is arbitrary and introduces race, class, gender, and other forms of bias into decisions. Others equate the spread of quantitative decision models with the “scientification” of administration and contend that it detracts from professionalism, democracy, and participatory administration. This study examines the implementation process and the role of risk/need assessment instruments for decisions about the proper level of supervision in parole and probation situations. The findings indicate a generally negative or, at best, neutral view toward the instruments, although they were seen as having some value for management and legitimation purposes. Paradoxically, the respondents found it hard to envision a system without them, and a slight majority believed the system was better off with the instruments than with discretionary decisions. One of the intriguing findings is that those who had more confidence in the value of the instruments also were more likely to believe they were personally effective in reducing recidivism, rehabilitating offenders, and reducing the crime rate. In this sense, the scientific status of the risk/need instruments lends perceptual rationality and legitimation to the work of the probation officers.

Methodological Problems in Victim Surveys and Their Implications for Research in Victimology

The purpose of this paper is to examine several of the more serious methodological problems in victimization surveying, with particular attention to the implications of certain measurement problems for basic research in victimology. Most of the paper deals with three aspects of measurement error: the amount of error contained in survey-generated estimates of victimization; the net direction of that error; and the correlates of error. Errors in survey data concerning the identification of persons as victims will be the primary focus.

The Evolution of a Policy Orientation for Evaluation Research: A Guide to Practice.

Although evaluation research has become an important part of the management structure in many public agencies, its contribution to improved policy making continues to be thwarted by two interrelated problems. First, despite increased attention to problems of utilization, evaluations are still produced which decision makers find are irrelevant for the decisions which they make (see, for example, Cronbach, 1980; Freeman and Solomon, 1981; Patton, 1978). Second, decision makers frequently need certain types of research information which seldom is produced by evaluation studies. Both of these problems stem from a common source: the conceptual framework which guides evaluation has not

A comparison of programmatic and ‘ad hoc’ restitution in juvenile courts

“Programmatic” and “ad hoc” approaches to restitution can be distinguished by the fact that the former usually involves a full-fledged restitution program with counselors or case workers who are responsible for liaison with victims, documentation of victim losses, development of restitution recommendations as part of the pre-sentence investigation, and implementation and monitoring of the restitution requirements. In an “ad hoc” approach, restitution is ordered on a relatively infrequent basis and, when ordered, it tends to be viewed as a relatively minor part of the probationary requirements, with little or no assistance given to either victims or offenders. The findings in this study show, first, that a programmatic, as compared to an ad hoc, approach to restitution in Dane County, Wisconsin clearly increased the likelihood that juveniles would repay victims and increased the amount of restitution. The second finding is that juveniles who completed their restitution requirements were less likely to reof...