Just the Facts: Evidence-based -v- Emotion-based Public Policy Making

February 2014 California:

A ground breaking analysis of the facts by CSOMB:

Fact-1: Residence restrictions would not have protected Jessica

Action: Use resources to enforce registration laws and prosecute the non-compliant. California registration law violations are largely felonies, and are mandated prison sentences, exempt from realignment local custody only sentences.

Action: Use resources for sex offender treatment, to influence what the offender does, not where he/she lives. Note: In the 2010 Legislative Session, ... ..Continued.. by California Sex Offender Management Board

Is there any evidence to support the belief that residence restrictions increase community safety?

September 2011 California:

The most direct and succinct answer that can be made to Question Two is the following: No, there is no evidence to support the assumption that residence restrictions are or would be effective in reducing sexual offending and thereby making communities actually safer.

There is no evidence to support that residence restrictions are effective in reducing sexual offending [or] making communities safer.

There does not seem to have ever been any attempt on the part of those who advocate for and create policies establishing residence restrictions to identify, conduct, sponsor, fund, promote or in any way establish a scientific research basis for such policies.

An absence of scientific support for residence restriction policies does not seem to have hampered their creation and proliferation. The general fear, misunderstanding, and antipathy toward sex offenders makes it easy to persuade the general public that things must be done to protect children from their attacks.

In such a cultural climate, the question about whether there is sufficient reason to believe that such “things” will accomplish the task is seldom seriously asked, much less answered.

The focus of residence restrictions is on the sexual abuse of children. No one seems to make a claim that residence restrictions will do anything to reduce sexual assault against adults. The belief that residence restrictions would be effective in reducing the sexual victimization of children seems to be based on a
set of underlying beliefs and assumptions about how sexual offenses against children occur. These assumptions include: ...Continued at Question 2.. by The California Sex Offender Management Board (CASOMB)

Treating sexual offenders: how did we get here and where are we headed?

January 2014:

Abstract

The field of sexual offender treatment has drawn inspiration from two major social movements: The women's movement, which defined sexual victimisation as a serious social problem, and correctional rehabilitation, which provided the vision and methods to reintegrate offenders as law-abiding citizens.

In this retrospective, I argue that we should also be guided by a third social force: The movement for evidence-based practice. In order to realise the potential of evidence-based practice, we need to support more and better research on sexual offender treatment. ..Source.. by R. Karl Hanson

SORNA's Approaching Deadlines by Dr. Levenson a Guest Blogger at SAJRT

7-21-2011 National:

Dr. Levenson was a Guest Blogger over at "Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment," and had the following to say about SORNA's approaching deadlines.

Here is a guest blog from Florida's Jill Levenson, a public policy researcher and expert. In this piece, Jill discusses a variety of issues associated with evidence-based risk management of sexual offenders--focusing specifically on the SORNA. Please note that the majority of Jill's references are in Sage Journals, which means that ATSA members can access them for free from the Members Only side of http://www.atsa.com/. RJW

With the SORNA deadline approaching next week, only eight states are in substantial compliance with the law. The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), which is Title 1 of the Adam Walsh Act (AWA), requires states to meet minimum standards in their sexual offender tracking and disclosure procedures.

Why is it that over 80% of states are not complying, especially when facing a 10% loss of federal crime funding each year? Since its inception, certain pieces of SORNA have been quite controversial and, in many cases, "deal-breakers" for states. Aside from the fiscal reality that SORNA will cost more for most states to implement than they would lose through penalties, parts of the law contradict evidence and best practices that some states have spent years refining.

Take, for example, the rigid offense-based tier system that classifies offenders by their statutes of conviction. There is a seemingly intuitive logic to the belief that statute titles, crime degrees, and descriptions accurately portray the offense in question. We all know, however, that in many cases statutory language does a poor job of characterizing the crime—and an even worse job of characterizing the criminal. In other words, SORNA tiers confuse the seriousness of the crime with the risk to reoffend. Although the SORNA guidelines cleverly avoid using the word risk, there is a clear implication, based on the associated longer registration durations and more frequent updates, that the Tier 3 offenders are more dangerous and therefore necessitate closer monitoring for longer periods. As well, "tier enhancements based on recidivism" can be made, allowing an offender with more than one conviction to be upgraded to a Tier 3 based on the repetitive nature of the criminal behavior—again suggesting to the public that higher tier assignments are associated with an increased likelihood of recidivism.

Unfortunately, in most instances, offense definitions are an inadequate means for evaluating risk or determining supervision needs. They overestimate risk for most offenders, and underestimate risk for those who plea-bargained to lesser offenses. Andrew Harris and colleagues (2010) found that applying SORNA criteria in Ohio and Oklahoma greatly skewed the distribution of risk into the highest tier compared to the states' prior classification schemes using risk assessment tools. Naomi Freeman and Jeffrey Sandler (2010) found that SORNA tiers were less effective in identifying sexual recidivists in New York than assessment tools utilizing risk factors statistically associated with recidivism. Many states have spent the past two decades developing and refining evidence-based risk management systems, and although SORNA does not technically require states to abandon the use of those tools, it does require registration and notification decisions to be based on the federal guidelines rather than the state's risk assessment.

And, speaking of longer registration durations (25 years to life), they contradict research indicating that sexual offenders become less likely to reoffend with increased time spent offense-free in the community. According to Static-99 guidelines, an offender's risk declines by half after 5 years, and by half again after 10 years. As well, reoffending declines with age. Right now, 20% of America's sexual offenders are over 56 years of age. Over time, with longer registration durations, we should anticipate an aging sexual offender population of which a greater proportion will pose a lower risk to public safety.

SMART Office staff have claimed that the purpose of SORNA was never to prevent recidivism, but to provide a monitoring tool for law enforcement and to increase public awareness. Indeed, the AWA legislative intent does not mention reduced reoffending as a goal. But, isn't that a little disingenuous? Why the need for enhanced law enforcement monitoring and increased public awareness if not for the hope of preventing future sex crimes and protecting potential victims from the trauma of sexual assault? Do Americans really want to spend tens of millions of dollars on sexual offender notification if it doesn't pay off in terms of protecting communities? Surveys of the American public have found that most citizens support SORN laws because, in fact, they believe them to be effective in reducing sexual recidivism. About a dozen empirical investigations (see summary in Levenson, 2009) have been conducted to date on the effectiveness of SORN laws to reduce recidivism. Most have not shown declines in sex crime rates generally or sexual recidivism specifically that can be attributed to SORN. Interestingly, the two studies that have noted significant effects on recidivism were conducted in Washington and Minnesota—both states with empirically derived risk assessment systems and concordant monitoring and management plans.

Or, consider the requirement that minors adjudicated delinquent in juvenile courts must be registered as sexual offenders. Though the SORNA guidelines conceded to states that public notification was discretionary, even registering juveniles with law enforcement contradicts a century of juvenile justice philosophy in the United States. The labeling of minors, and the subsequent potential obstacles to educational, occupational, and social opportunities, seems counter-intuitive to both juvenile advocates and victim advocates. This component of SORNA has been a noted barrier to implementation for many states.

We've seen the harrowing story of Jaycee Dugard in recent weeks, and all of us wondered how a registered sexual offender could get away with holding someone captive for 18 years. We've heard the scathing reports of parole agent incompetence, and we've used our 20/20 hindsight to shrewdly point out the missed clues. There is no doubt in anyone's mind that Garrido was high risk; he'd had two previous arrests, one resulting in a conviction for the abduction and rape of a woman whom he held hostage until she escaped.

But, perhaps, the real answer to the unfathomable question—How could this happen?? —is simply that Philip Garrido was a needle in a haystack. Philip Garrido is an example of how overzealous SORN laws might actually be counterproductive. As the registered sexual offender population nears three quarters of a million, fiscal and personnel resources are spread thin, law enforcement agents' capacity to target their monitoring toward more dangerous individuals is compromised, and the public's ability to distinguish truly high-risk predators is diluted. As Robin Wilson astutely pointed out in his recent San Francisco public radio interview, cases like Jaycee (and Adam Walsh, Jessica Lunsford, and Megan Kanka) are exceedingly rare, which is why they command so much attention—they shock us. They are statistically improbable events not representative of the vast majority of sexual assault cases and, thus, not the best cases on which to base public policy designed to address a rampant social problem.

Oh, and what about those 100,000 missing sexual offenders discussed repeatedly in AWA legislative hearings and in news reports? The ones who supposedly take advantage of discrepancies in laws to shop around for lax states where they can more easily neglect to register and avoid detection while seeking new child victims? My colleagues and I (Levenson & Harris, 2011) analyzed data downloaded directly from the online registries, along with surveys of registry managers, and we discovered that approximately 4% of the nation's RSOs have addresses that cannot be verified. We estimate the number of noncompliant sexual offenders to be between 25,000 and 30,000—but less than half of them are officially designated by states to have truly absconded. And, incidentally, research conducted in Minnesota, South Carolina, New York, and New Jersey all conclude that failure to register does not typically contribute to the likelihood for sexual recidivism.

Perhaps the apparent lack of state enthusiasm for SORNA will provide an impetus to re-open the dialogue about sexual offender management. SORNA in its current form sacrifices precision for over-inclusion, quality for quantity, efficiency for symbolism. By going back to the drawing board, with input from victim advocates, law enforcement, psychologists, criminal justice practitioners, and academic researchers, Congress has an opportunity to create model legislation that is evidence-based and more likely to achieve the goal of preventing repeat sexual violence.

The Efficacy of Severe Child Pornography Sentencing: Empirical Validity or Political Rhetoric?

November 2010:

Abstract:
The federal sentencing guidelines for child pornography offenses are the subject of current debate among the leading institutions responsible for sentencing. During the last two decades, Congress has broadened the scope of child pornography laws and increased minimum and maximum statutory sentences. Congress has also uniquely intruded upon the United States Sentencing Commission’s normal institutional role by forcing higher sentencing ranges recommended by the sentencing guidelines. A divided federal judiciary has played another role in the debate. While many judges are using their recently awarded discretion to reduce child pornography sentences, often far below guidelines ranges, another group of judges adhere to the harsher guidelines in sentencing. The result of the foregoing has been significant disparities in sentencing, which undermine the foundational goals of proportionality and fairness.

As a result of a moral panic about sexual abuse involving children, severe sentencing proponents fundamentally appear to use child pornography offenses as a proxy to punishing undetected child molestation. The theory underlying the proxy approach is that child pornography is a causative or correlative factor for contact sex offending against children. This paper addresses the debate with various analyses. It reviews Congress’ ongoing interventions into child pornography sentencing and summarizes recent developments in the trend toward rising guidelines ranges. Disparities in final sentences are observed in a comprehensive review of case law showing the division of opinion in the federal judiciary and deriving judicial rationales for either downward variances from or adhering to the strict child pornography guidelines ranges. The efficacy of the proxy approach is challenged through a substantive review of the empirical evidence concerning any nexus between child pornography and child sexual abuse. Overall, the studies fail to support any causative connection and generally find a relative few studies that show weak support for any direct correlation. Rather, the evidence generally indicates that child pornography offenders and child molesters are not synonymous groupings. This paper illustrates that sentencing policy would be better served if the interested parties rationally assessed the social science evidence indicating that most child pornography offenders fail to pose a substantial risk of contact offending against children and, thereby, substantively reconfigure the sentencing guidelines accordingly. ..Source.. by Melissa Hamilton, University of South Carolina - School of Law

Registering Harm: How sex offense registries fail youth and communities

September 2009:

Congress passed the Adam Walsh Act, a federal law that requires states to include children as young as age 14 on registries — often for the rest of their lives — in an attempt to protect our children from sexual violence.

But the Adam Walsh Act won’t keep our children safe.

Instead, this law will consume valuable law enforcement resources, needlessly target children and families, and undermine the very purpose of the juvenile justice system. Thankfully, states can opt out of compliance with this law, and make smart investments in programs and policies that will actually protect our children and our communities.

Introduction
Initially, registries were restricted to law enforcement use and were used largely to track adults who had been convicted of violent sex offenses. More recently, policymakers have expanded the scope of registries by including children on the registry, requiring registration for nonviolent offenses, and making registries available to the public in online databases. The Adam Walsh Act is a federal law that aims to further expand the breadth of registries at the state level and requires states to list all registrants on the national online database, the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry. This report documents the issues related to public safety and fiscal accountability that states should consider as they determine whether to comply with the Adam Walsh Act or otherwise expand the reach of their existing registries.

During the past two decades, sensationalized media accounts of crimes that have a sexualized component have driven policy aimed at preventing sexual violence. As a result, millions of dollars of state and federal resources support registries despite that fact that there is no evidence that public registries reduce sexual violence. What we do know, however, is that these registries consume public safety resources and may be funded at the expense of alternative approaches that research suggests actually would reduce sexual violence in our communities.

Research shows that laws that place people convicted of sex offenses on registries or that mandate other restrictions are counterproductive and may even make the problem of sexual violence worse. These laws do not deter inappropriate behavior; instead, registries can actually create more crime by alienating those on the registry from social support systems, including education, employment, and housing, that have been shown to reduce the likelihood that an individual might participate in illegal activities.

The Adam Walsh Act (AWA)* mandates the registration of children for certain sex offenses and, through coordinated state effort, the appearance of those records on the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry, which is maintained by the FBI. The AWA requires registration for youth as young as age 14 despite the fact that research shows that children are very amenable to rehabilitation and that the consequences of registration are likely to undermine any rehabilitative programming available for children. In some cases, these young people will be on a public registry for the rest of their lives, which can have numerous and permanent negative effects on their lives and those of their families, including alienation from social networks, schools, and churches. The AWA purports to protect children, yet subjecting youth to these consequences fails to provide any public safety benefit and instead significantly harms youth who are forced to register.

Victims’ rights groups, organizations founded in the name of children harmed by sexual violence, treatment professionals, criminal justice reformers, and researchers have noted that sex offense registries can generate a false sense of security for people in communities and do not provide adequate information on how to protect their families from sexual offenses.

Registries have questionable — and sometimes negative — public safety outcomes for several reasons, including law enforcement’s inability to accurately track and maintain all the information required by the registries in a timely manner. Additionally, most registries indiscriminately sweep up people who pose no threat to public safety. The over-inclusiveness of a registry actually diminishes its value as a public safety tool because it becomes impossible to determine who might pose a real threat.

Furthermore, establishing and maintaining registries consumes law enforcement time and money. States can expect to spend millions of dollars fully implementing and sustaining the guidelines of the AWA, without significant federal financial assistance. Law enforcement officers who previously protected our communities are now tracking down people who fail to register, many of whom are not a threat to public safety. This gives police little time to focus on monitoring the select individuals who may be a high risk to the community. Simply put, registries divert resources from positive and effective public safety strategies that have been proven to prevent sexual violence and lower violence in communities.


However, even with enough law enforcement resources to make sure that people are registering accurately and often, there is a distinct lack of evidence that supports the notion that registries make us safer. In fact, the opposite may be true. Continued investments in registries put our families in danger with short-sighted policies that alienate people who are trying to safely re-enter the community. We owe it to our children and to our communities to implement sound public safety strategies based on evidence, not media-created hype.

This report explores the potential impact that compliance with the Adam Walsh Act will have on states, communities, and youth, who are targeted by the new legislation. The report includes the following findings:

For the remainder of this report: by The Justice Policy Institute would like to thank Sarah Bryer, Nicole Pittman, Tara Andrews, and Sarah Tofte for their invaluable suggestions, expertise, and support. Special thanks to Russell Estes and Scott Phillips at the Southern Poverty Law
Center for their creativity in the design of the report. JPI staff includes Sheila Bedi, Debra Glapion, LaWanda Johnson, Laura Jones, Amanda Petteruti, Emily Sydnor, and Nastassia Walsh.

This report would not have been possible without the generous support of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Public Welfare Foundation, and Open Society Institute.

In every state, the first-year cost of implementing the Adam Walsh Act outweighs the cost of losing 10 percent of the state’s Byrne grant money.*

MN- Residential Proximity & Sex Offense Recidivism in Minnesota

April 2007 Minnesota:

Executive Summary:
In an effort to curb the incidence of sexual recidivism, state and local governments across the country have passed residency restriction laws. Designed to enhance public safety by protecting children, residency restrictions prohibit sex offenders and, in particular, child molesters from living within a certain distance (500 to 2,500 feet) of a school, park, playground or other location where children are known to congregate. Given that existing research has yet to fully investigate whether housing restrictions reduce sexual recidivism, the present study examines the potential deterrent effect of residency restrictions by analyzing the sexual reoffense patterns of the 224 recidivists released between 1990 and 2002 who were reincarcerated for a sex crime prior to 2006.

In order to determine whether the 224 cases might have been affected by residency restrictions, four basic criteria were used.

1. Because housing restrictions are geared primarily towards deterring sex offenders—namely, child molesters—from initiating contact with potential victims, offenders had to establish direct contact with the victims, as opposed to gaining access to their victims through another person they know such as a significant other (e.g. wife, fiancée, girlfriend, etc.), friend, co-worker, or acquaintance.

2. The contact had to have occurred within at least one mile of the offender’s residence at the time of the offense.

3. The first contact location had to have been near a school, park, daycare center, or other prohibited area.

4. The victim had to have been under the age of 18 at the time of the offense.

Data on the most recent sex offense for the 224 recidivists were derived from the criminal complaint, the pre-sentence investigation (PSI) report, the Statewide Supervision (SSS) database, and the Minnesota Department of Corrections’ (DOC) Correctional Operations Management System (COMS) database.

Results
Not one of the 224 sex offenses would likely have been deterred by a residency restrictions law. Only 79 (35 percent) of the cases involved offenders who established direct contact with their victims. Of these, 28 initiated victim contact within one mile of their own residence, 21 within 0.5 miles (2,500 feet), and 16 within 0.2 miles (1,000 feet). A juvenile was the victim in 16 of the 28 cases.

But none of the 16 cases involved offenders who established victim contact near a school, park, or other prohibited area. Instead, the 16 offenders typically used a ruse to gain access to their victims, who were most often their neighbors. ..Source.. by Minnesota Department of Corrections

When Evidence Is Ignored: Residential Restrictions For Sex Offenders

December 2007

The use of evidence-based practices in corrections and public policy is now considered the gold standard for policy and program development. Numerous examples (as discussed throughout this edition of Corrections Today) are available to show the importance and benefits of such an approach. In the practice of both institutional and community corrections, scientific evidence is important in formulating foundations for the operation of policies and programs. It identifies which are most likely to yield the desired results and where decisions can be guided to facilitate the achievement of safe, secure and humane institutions as well as enhanced community safety. Some observers criticize correctional policies and programs for contributing to high rates of recidivism, institutional violence, and the general failure of offenders to transform into productive and law-abiding citizens. It is therefore critical for correctional policies and practices to adhere to an evidence-based approach.

However, many of the ways that correctional facilities and programs operate are determined not by informed correctional administrators but instead by decision-makers outside the correctional enterprise. There are several obvious downfalls to this procedure. First, when decisions are made outside the correctional realm, these policies either may impose restrictions on corrections officials in being able to do what they know is in the best interests of offenders and society, or the policies may compel them to implement practices that differ from recognized best practices. Second, sizeable costs may not always achieve the most efficient distribution of resources. If increased resources do not accompany new public policies, corrections officials may be forced to reallocate funding away from well-informed and beneficial programs and practices. Third, when those outside the correctional industry develop policies, corrections officials can end up (inappropriately) bearing the brunt of public disparagement for ill-advised decisions.

The value of an evidence-based approach to policy development and program implementation is best realized when decisions are made by individuals who are educated in the extensive research literature and experienced in translating scientific data into correctional practices and programs. The focus of this article is on the effect of the misguided and detrimental development of a community corrections practice that ignores existing research evidence. Residential restrictions for registered sex offenders is a clear example of how criminal re-integration, and potentially public safety, are negatively impacted by the failure of policymakers to draw on research evidence in establishing crime prevention policy.

Sex Offender Registration And Residential Restrictions

The registration of sex offenders has been a prominent part of the American criminal justice landscape since 1994 when Congress enacted the Jacob Wetterling Act that required convicted sex offenders to record their addresses with local law enforcement agencies. Megan’s Law amended the Wetterling Act in 1996 by allowing the dissemination of registry information directly to the public. In 2006, the Adam Walsh Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act facilitated the creation of a national, Internet-based searchable sex offender database; increased registration and notification requirements; and enhanced penalties for crimes against children and for failure to register.

As a result of increased awareness of sex offenders living in the nation’s communities, approximately one-half of the states and hundreds of local municipalities have also enacted laws that impose restrictions on where registered sex offenders may reside. Explicitly intended to enhance the safety of children, these laws prohibit registered sex offenders from living within specified distances (usually onequarter to one-half mile) of places where children are likely to congregate. Various state laws and local ordinances identify protected zones around entities such as schools, daycare centers, public playgrounds and swimming pools, libraries, and school bus stops. On the surface, such laws are both politically and socially attractive, as they appear to be intuitively logical and well-intentioned public policies.

However, although residence restrictions appear to be rational and valid social policy, there are numerous problems with both their design and implementation. Making communities safer for children is a laudable goal, but these laws do not achieve that goal because they are fundamentally flawed for several important reasons. First, these laws are based upon the widespread beliefs that sex offenders have extremely high recidivism rates, sex-crime rates are on the rise and sex offenders often kill their victims. Second, there is an assumption that sex offenders are a homogeneous group and that all pose equal risk. Residence laws usually apply to all registered sex offenders, regardless of whether an individual is a predatory pedophile or whether his (or her) victims of choice are adults, the elderly or family members. Finally, the myth of stranger danger assumes that sex offenders frequently make contact with potential child victims in public locations and that they entice or abduct unsupervised children from such places.

Flaw No. 1. Media attention of sex crimes, especially random and lethal acts of sexual violence against children, gives the impression that sex-crime rates are higher than ever. In actuality, sexual assaults, like most crimes, have been on the decline for 15 years. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, rates of substantiated sexual abuse of children have dropped by 51 percent since 1991. These declines are consistently seen in data from child protective services, law enforcement and victim surveys. Media coverage tends to portray sexually motivated child abductions as a real threat to children, but the Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that only approximately 100 such cases occur in the United States each year. Sex offenders also are reputed to have exceedingly high recidivism rates, inciting fear of inevitable re-offending. Large sophisticated studies following nearly 30,000 sex offenders from North America and Europe have found that, on average, only about 14 percent of convicted sex offenders are rearrested for new sex crimes within four to six years after release.1

Flaw No. 2. Recidivism rates differ based on the offense type and risk factors such as offender age, pattern of sexual deviance, criminal history and victim preferences. Pedophiles who molest boys have the highest probability of re-offense (but fewer than 40 percent of sex offenders are diagnosed with pedophilia), while rapists of adults have the next highest probability of re-offending. Though often thought of as the most relentless and dangerous of offenders, sex offenders are in fact among the least likely offenders to re-offend or to murder their victims.2

Flaw No. 3. Laws restricting where sex offenders may live have been inspired by crimes committed by perpetrators who were strangers to their victims. However, a wellestablished body of research has clearly demonstrated that such cases are the rare exception, not the typical way children come to be sexually victimized. Children are much more likely to be molested by trusted caretakers and relatives. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that 34 percent of sexually abused minors were assaulted by family members and 59 percent by acquaintances.3 In addition, about 49 percent of victims under the age of six are abused by people related to them, and it is estimated that less than 7 percent of sex crimes against juveniles are committed by strangers. Similarly, about three-fourths of sex crimes against adults are perpetrated by known assailants, BJS reports. ..more.. by Richard Tewksbury is a professor of justice administration at the University of Louisville Department of Justice Administration. Jill Levenson is an assistant professor of human services at Lynn University in Florida.

Tewksbury, R. & Levenson, J.S. (2007). When Evidence is Ignored: Residential Restrictions for Sex Offenders. Corrections Today, December 2007.

What Works: Effective Recidivism Reduction and Risk-Focused Prevention Programs

February 2008:

A Compendium of Evidence-Based Options for Preventing New and Persistent Criminal Behavior


Executive Summary:
This report identifies and describes interventions that are effective in reducing recidivism and preventing crime. The primary audience is the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, and the primary goal of this compendium is to assist the Commission in carrying out its mission and statutory duties. These duties include investigating evidence-based recidivism reduction initiatives and costeffective crime prevention programs.

Descriptions of the findings presented in this summary can be found in the body of the report where relevant studies are referenced. Complete citations can be found in the bibliography.

Method
This report is based on a comprehensive and systematic review of the criminology literature on what works to reduce recidivism or prevent the onset of delinquent and criminal behavior. Information was obtained by reviewing evaluation and other reports on correctional interventions and early, risk-focused prevention programs operating in the United States and Canada. To identify what works, both quality
and consistency of the evidence was considered. Quality was addressed by basing the conclusions presented here on the latest and most rigorous scientific evidence available. Consistency was addressed by focusing on research that synthesized the evaluation results from many studies and programs.

For the remainder of this 146 page study: Prepared for: Division of Criminal Justice, Jeanne M. Smith, Director, Colorado Department of Public Safety, Peter A. Weir, Executive Director by RKC Group, Roger Przybylski