Dr Tiffany Bergin - The Evidence Enigma: Correctional Boot Camps and Other Failures in Evidence-Based Policymaking

THE EVIDENCE ENIGMA

Solving Social Problems

Series Editor:
Bonnie Berry, Director of the Social Problems Research Group, USA

Solving Social Problems provides a forum for the description and measurement of social problems, with a keen focus on the concrete remedies proposed for their solution. The series takes an international perspective, exploring social problems in various parts of the world, with the central concern being always their possible remedy. As such, work is welcomed on subjects as diverse as environmental damage, terrorism, economic disparities and economic devastation, poverty, inequalities, domestic assaults and sexual abuse, health care, natural disasters, labour inequality, animal abuse, crime, and mental illness and its treatment. In addition to recommending solutions to social problems, the books in this series are theoretically sophisticated, exploring previous discussions of the issues in question, examining other attempts to resolve them, and adopting and discussing methodologies that are commonly used to measure social problems. Proposed solutions may be framed as changes in policy, practice, or more broadly, social change and social movement. Solutions may be reflective of ideology, but are always pragmatic and detailed, explaining the means by which the suggested solutions might be achieved.

Street Practice
Changing the Lens on Poverty and Public Assistance
Lori McNeil

Prison Violence
Causes, Consequences and Solutions
Kristine Levan

Borderline Slavery
Mexico, United States, and the Human Trade
Edited by Susan Tiano and Moira Murphy-Aguilar with Brianne Bigej

Teaching Justice
Solving Social Justice Problems through University Education
Kristi Holsinger

Correctional Boot Camps and Other Failures in Evidence-Based Policymaking

TIFFANY BERGIN
University of Cambridge, UK

First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 2013 Tiffany Bergin

Tiffany Bergin has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Bergin, Tiffany.

The evidence enigma : correctional boot camps and other failures in evidence-based policymaking. (Solving social problems)

1. Shock incarceration--United States--Evaluation. 2. Alternatives to imprisonment--Government policy--United States. 3. Policy sciences.

I. Title II. Series
365.3'4-dc23

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows
Bergin, Tiffany.

The evidence enigma : correctional boot camps and other failures in evidence-based policymaking / by Tiffany Bergin.

p. cm. -- (Solving social problems)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4094-4490-9 (hardback) 1. Shock incarceration--United States. 2. Alternatives to imprisonment--United States. 3. Shock incarceration--United States--Case studies. 4. Alternatives to imprisonment--United States--Case studies. I. Title.

HV9278.5.B47 2013

365'.34--dc23

2012035944

ISBN 9781409444909 (hbk)
ISBN 9781315558417 (ebk)

This monograph has its origins in doctoral research that I conducted at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. I am deeply grateful for the advice of my doctoral thesis supervisor, Manuel Eisner, and the feedback of my thesis examiners, Friedrich Lsel from the University of Cambridge and Julian Roberts from the University of Oxford. Chris McConnells insights were also invaluable. I am thankful for the support of the Cambridge Overseas Trust while I undertook that work. I am additionally grateful to Bonnie Berry, the editor of the Solving Social Problems book series, and Neil Jordan at Ashgate for their suggestions. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude for the ongoing support of the Sutasoma Trust and Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, without which I would not have been able to complete this book. Of course, as author, the contents of this book are my responsibility alone.

Evidence-based policy is a familiar slogan. The phrase, which refers to a public policy that is informed by empirical evidence, came into vogue in the 1990s. It is now widely used by academics, policymakers, and practitioners in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere (Banks, 2009; Marston and Watts, 2003). Numerous scholars have encouraged policymakers and practitioners to adopt evidence-based policies and programs (e.g., Argyrous, 2009; Davies, Nutley, and Smith, 2000; Dickson and Flynn, 2008; Law and MacDermid, 2008). Yet few scholars have explored the fundamental question of why policymakers sometimes adopt policies that are not supported by evidence (see Bogenschneider and Corbett, 2010, for one exception).

This book endeavors to fill this gap and unravel the political, economic, social, cultural, and other concerns that can trump research evidence in policymakers decisions. The lessons of one particular case studya criminal justice policy that was not supported by evidence but spread to almost every US state during the 1980s and 1990sare explored in great depth. Although the case study concerns a criminal justice policy, many of the case studys lessons apply to other kinds of public policies as well, and additional examples are cited to illustrate these applications.

The case study that is discussed in most depth involves correctional boot camps in the US. Correctional boot camps are correctional facilities inspired by military boot camps and typically reserved for younger offenders, who endure a tough regime of military-inspired drills, physical exertion, and rigid discipline (Wilson, MacKenzie, and Mitchell, 2003). Programs generally last for less than a year and require prisoners to wear uniforms and address correctional officers with military-style deference (Gowdy, 1996).

Although similar programs have been trialed in other countries (Atkinson, 1995; Farrington et al., 2002), boot camps achieved their greatest popularity in the US, where a majority of states adopted some form of correctional boot camp in the 1980s through early 1990s. Such programs first emerged in Georgia and Oklahoma in 1983 (Armstrong, 2004). By the end of 1988, 13 US states had adopted correctional boot camp programs for adults (Cronin, 1994; US General Accounting Office [GAO], 1988). By the end of 1992, less than a decade after they first appeared, 32 states had adopted boot camps for adult offenders and 7 states had adopted boot camps for juvenile offenders (Cronin, 1994; Koch Institute, 2000; US GAO, 1993). In the late 1990s and the 2000s, however, the tide turned against boot camps (Stinchcomb and Terry, 2001), and a dozen states had abolished their adult or juvenile boot camp programs by the end of 2005 (Clines, 1999; Coppolo and Nelson, 2005; Salzer, 2008; Schwartz, 1996; Sexton, 2006). illustrates the spread and contraction of boot camps between 1983 and 2005, the time period considered in this research project. Shaded states had adopted boot camps for adult or juvenile offenders by the end of the relevant year. States without color had not adopted or had already abolished all of their boot camps. In these maps one can observe the dramatic spread of boot camp programs until around 1997, when more states become colorless again.