Book review:
The Evidence Enigma: Correctional Boot Camps and Other Failures in Evidence-Based Policymaking, Tiffany Bergin, (Ashgate, 2013), 213 pages.
Why do policy makers adopt policies for which there is no evidence that they will work or for which the evidence is clear that they will not work? Why do they continue to defend policies which have demonstrably failed or for which the unintended consequences are so costly as to undermine their rationale? Why do policy makers ignore evidence that policies are failing thereby squandering resources that could be diverted to policies with a better track record? The Evidence Enigma does not answer all of theses questions, but it does shed some light on the complexity of policy making in one highly contested policy domain.
Bergin begins with a question: What explains the rapid diffusion of boot camps – correctional facilities inspired by military drills, physical exertion and rigid discipline – to almost every U.S. state during the 1980s and 1990s when it was clear that these facilities were not reducing either recidivism rates, prison overcrowding or justice system costs? Their failure to achieve any of these objectives did not reduce their appeal to policy makers – indeed their popularity grew with evidence of their failure to deliver on their promises. The same questions can be posed for Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), which survives in many jurisdictions despite numerous well-designed meta-analyses and evaluations demonstrating little to no deterrent effect on participants. The granddaddy of all failed policies to which policy makers are still committed, of course, is the war on drugs. The example of boot camps, however, is particularly interesting because so much was known about them so early in their diffusion across the United States.
Bergin employs a multi-method approach to unravel her problem, involving extensive quantitative, qualitative and event history analysis of the diffusion and then contraction of the boot camp model, the racial composition of jurisdictions in which boot camps were located, the economic conditions for which boot camps were supposed to be a partial remedy, the geographic proximity of one boot camp jurisdiction to another, the prevalence of military veterans among policy makers in a given jurisdiction, the pervasiveness of media articles about boot camps, the influence of federal funding programs, the percentage of Evangelical Christians in a given jurisdiction, the north-south geographic location of boot-camp jurisdictions, the nature of local electoral competition and numerous other variables.
She finds that boot camps were more likely to be adopted in jurisdictions with higher adult incarceration rates and conservative populations; more popular in jurisdictions with higher percentages of African Americans and Evangelical Christians and higher levels of income inequality. In fact, these three variables correlate reliably with early adoption of boot camp regimes. Furthermore, state governors who were military veterans – and jurisdictions with a high percentage of military veterans in their populations – were less likely to abolish boot camps once the contraction set in.
Of the contending theoretical streams, Bergin finds that Windlesham’s populist theory – a conservative political climate in a racially charged environment – was the strongest predictor of the adoption of boot camps. By contrast, Kingdon’s theory that boot camps found their way onto legislative agenda in response to “problems” – i.e., high rates of crime, incarceration and levels of prison overcrowding – found little support in the analysis. Boot camps, in other words, were not so much a solution to a problem but a predilection arising out of the particular ideological needs of specific populations and their political leadership.
Bergin’s analysis concludes that the diffusion of boot camps is easier to explain than their contraction. Jurisdictions with higher levels of military veterans, higher levels of Black and Hispanic populations and greater numbers of Evangelical Christians proved more resistant to the evidence that boot camps were not delivering savings, lower rates of re-offending or reduced rates of prison overcrowding.
So what light does this study – of one policy model in the United States – tell us about the general problem of policy makers’ adherence to failed policies, or to policies for which there is no support in evidence or for which the evidence contradicts the policy preference? No single theory of policy diffusion seems adequate: all explain some aspect but leave other issues unaddressed. Missing from Bergin’s account is a discussion of power – specifically the power to frame a particular problem area as responsive to a preferred policy response. What we have, in the boot camp example, are indicators of kinds of power without an articulate account of how power frames and circumscribes the limits of the possible – making some options live and rendering others out of order.
Policy makers do not simply do what they want, particularly in a realm like criminal justice, which is costly and involves deprivation of liberty. They must fashion responses according to the menu of available and acceptable options and within the requirements of electoral survival – which involves a shrewd estimation of what their constituents will endorse or at least tolerate. When populations are largely passive in their preferences, of course, policy makers can exercise discretion – but when policy makers are constrained by electoral competition, the need to be seen to be doing something can overwhelm even the most honourable political instincts. The need to be seen to be doing something – which is distinct from the reality of actually doing something – looms large in domains like criminal justice where policy makers know, or rapidly learn, that they can do little of long-term substance in the short mandates available to them. This is how we come to see – particularly in criminal justice – the triumph of symbol over substance and the willingness to subordinate principle to electoral opportunity.
Bergin’s study of boot camps offers valuable insights into the diffusion and contraction of a discredited policy – but the book provokes as many questions as it answers. And that is often the mark of a good book.
– Craig Jones, PhD
Craig Jones is the former Executive Director of The John Howard Society of Canada.
