The online Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Criminal Justice program from Texas A&M International University (TAMIU) emphasizes the importance of evidence-based policy development in criminal justice. Building policies and laws based on evidence and research is critical to ensuring fairness and effectiveness. In addition, understanding evidence-based policy strategies is important for business, public sector and criminal justice professionals.
What Is Evidence-Based Policy?
The discipline of evidence-based policymaking refers to using high-quality data and knowledge when considering which policies to advance, establishing funding levels and implementing new or revised government policies. An evidence-based decision involves the systematic collection of high-quality information and rigorous analysis of data points to aid in decision making. Professionals can analyze policies and programs using evidence for insight into how, when and where they work or how they change over time.
A key feature of evidence-based policy is transparency. The public should have access to information and its potential outcomes. The poor alternative is to present information through the biased lenses of individual, fallible policymakers who can misinterpret data points to justify their inclinations.
How Is Evidence Produced and Used?
For evidence-based policymaking to be effectively institutionalized, the evidence must be produced and made available for decision-makers to use, from deliberation to implementation, monitoring, reporting and revising policies. Evidence is generated through various data collection and research methods, including administrative information collecting, interviews, observations, surveys and advanced data analytics methods that combine different data points.
The process is collaborative and can involve information technology officers, data scientists, program managers, evaluators and researchers in government agencies, private firms, non-profit organizations, think tanks and academia. In addition, some use actuarial risk assessments to take the process a step further. In criminal justice reform policymaking, these assessments are beneficial for understanding criminal antisocial attitudes, personality patterns and behaviors, notes the EBP Society.
Complex, nonlinear processes can also be involved in policymaking. Institutions might implement policies in distinct ways depending on the issue, stakeholders, contexts, constraints, considerations and politics. After policymakers identify an issue and decide to dedicate resources to solving the problem, they can formulate a policy response based on the relevant evidence base. Various stages of the policymaking process can use evidence, from the definition of the problem to the identification of a solution.
Why Is Evidence-Based Policy Critical to Ethical, Effective Laws and Regulations?
The discipline involved in evidence-based policy creation and implementation creates a comprehensive understanding of the factors involved in effective policy decisions. Here are a few key reasons why evidence-based policymaking is so critical to these objectives:
- Evidence-based policymaking establishes mechanisms for collecting evidence for future policy development.
- Organizations can use the collected information to implement policies and for their ongoing work.
- The rigorous process, which often includes motivational interviewing, results in identifying treatment needs that address intrinsic motivation. This can result in lasting reform for individual criminal offenders.
- Over time, evidence-based policy leads to an understanding of how specific offender traits match with intervention options based on motivations and risk assessments.
- This discipline can lead to targeted interventions that effectively deter offenders from repeating patterns, lowering recidivism rates. By keeping offenders out of the prison culture, this discipline leads to more positive individual outcomes.
- The collected data informs the psychological community, which can develop effective cognitive behavioral therapy approaches to reforming offenders.
The TAMIU Online MBA in Criminal Justice Program Curriculum
When policymakers can measure and monitor how policies and programs perform, they can assure taxpayers that their resources support the most effective solutions to national, state and city problems. The EBP Society refers to one quote from the National Center for State Courts that emphasizes the power of data in criminal justice efforts: “In corrections, there are eight accepted principles believed to reduce recidivism of offenders: the use of risk assessments, the need to enhance motivation, targeting interventions, matching offender traits with interventions, use of cognitive behavioral therapy, strengthening pro-social influences, adhering to program principles, and the use of data to guide actions.”
TAMIU’s online MBA in Criminal Justice program prepares students to become effective evidence-based policymakers. They learn what evidence-based policy is and why it is so beneficial in courses including Business Research Methods, Foundations in Criminal Justice, White-Collar Crime and Cybercrime. The program equips professionals to consciously avoid biases and assumptions in evidence collection and analysis and to apply concepts that support organizational and governmental, evidence-based public policies.
Learn more about TAMIU’s online MBA in Criminal Justice program.
