As society and culture evolve and shape criminal justice perspectives, programs and policies need to be evaluated and improved. In this discussion you explore and discuss the evaluation of these policies and programs, including types of evaluation and methods of evaluating.
Respond to the following in a minimum of 175 words:
• What does evaluation mean within the context of criminal justice programs?
• What is the difference between summative and formative evaluations for criminal justice policies and programs?
• What approaches should evaluators use to build evaluation capacity among staff of the program they are evaluating?
• Are qualitative or quantitative methods more effective for evaluation? What factors affect your choice?
RESPOND TO LEKETA
In the context of criminal justice, evaluation is the process of measuring and accessing the effectiveness and the efficiency of criminal justice laws, statutes, programs, and gazette policies for the purpose of evaluating their capacity to withstand or accommodate shifting dynamics in the criminal justice filed. Criminal justice evaluations can either be summative or formative. Formative evaluations are measurements used by criminal justice program designers and implementers to mitigate challenges arising from the program to ensure the programs are flowing seamlessly and all the technicalities and hindrances are mitigated (Johnson et al., 2017). On the other hand, summative evaluations are integral at the decision-making stage and are important in evaluating whether a program should continue to run, scrapped, replicated, or transformed.
Evaluators can use various approaches to build capacity among the staff they are evaluating. Such approaches include using a systemic random approach that capitalizes on the individual strengths of the employees and their specific input into the program. Also, evaluators can build capacity by engaging program stakeholders capitalizing on the existing strengths. Quantitative approaches are more effective and useful for evaluations since they take lesser time to show results. The choice of the method is affected by the size and complexity of the asset or the program to be evaluated.
RESPOND TO NICOLE
The meaning of evaluation within the criminal justice programs is when it is approaching to improve the programs processes, and the practices are examined and refined to improve the outcomes. So it would be helpful if there is an evaluation at least quarterly and annually, and it would not check on it monthly to ensure it’s going on the right track.
