British Randomized Experiments on Crime and Justice

A number of randomized experiments are summarized that were carried out in Great Britain in the 1960s and 1970s to investigate influences on offending and the effectiveness of interventions to reduce offending. Few such experiments have been carried out in the past twenty-five years, partly because of the influence of Ron Clarke and Derek Cornish on Home Office policy. This article reviews Clarke and Cornish's objections to randomized experiments and concludes that experimenters need to demonstrate in which circumstances they are optimal. The Home Office seems more receptive to randomized experiments nowadays.

[1]  K. Pease,et al.  Community service assessed in 1976 , 1977 .

[2]  D. Farrington,et al.  Prison size, overcrowding, prison violence, and recidivism , 1980 .

[3]  D. Farrington,et al.  Serious and Violent Juvenile Offenders: Risk Factors and Successful Interventions , 1999 .

[4]  R. Hullin,et al.  THE EFFECT OF TWO RANDOMLY ALLOCATED COURT PROCEDURES ON TRUANCY , 1978 .

[5]  R. Hartnoll,et al.  Evaluation of heroin maintenance in controlled trial. , 1980, Archives of general psychiatry.

[6]  C. Nuttall.  The Home Office and Random Allocation Experiments , 2003, Evaluation review.

[7]  A. Oakley,et al.  Randomisation and resource allocation: a missed opportunity for evaluating health care and social interventions , 2000, Journal of medical ethics.

[8]  D. Farrington,et al.  An experimental study of sentencing by magistrates , 1981 .

[9]  B. J. Knight,et al.  Stealing From a "Lost" Letter , 1980 .

[10]  R. Hullin,et al.  Are Interim Care Orders Necessary to Improve School Attendance in Truants Taken to Juvenile Court , 1990 .

[11]  Richard E. Tremblay,et al.  Preventing antisocial behavior: Interventions from birth through adolescence. , 1993 .

[12]  David P. Farrington,et al.  The Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Group , 2001 .

[13]  L. Delbeke.  Quasi-experimentation - design and analysis issues for field settings - cook,td, campbell,dt , 1980 .

[14]  Crime control in Britain : a review of policy research , 1985 .

[15]  J. D. Pratt,et al.  FOLK-LORE AND FACT IN TRUANCY RESEARCH , 1983 .

[16]  G. Rose,et al.  EFFECTS OF A JUVENILE LIAISON SCHEME , 1970 .

[17]  Ronald V. Clarke,et al.  Residential treatment and its effects on delinquency , 1975 .

[18]  John Spencer.  Prediction Methods in Relation to Borstal Training , 1956, Mental Health.

[19]  L. Miller,et al.  Prevention of Serious and Violent Juvenile Offending , 2000 .

[20]  David P. Farrington,et al.  Psychology, law, and legal processes , 1979 .

[21]  David Weisburd,et al.  Randomized Experiments in Criminal Justice Policy: Prospects and Problems , 2000 .

[22]  F. Mosteller,et al.  Evidence matters : randomized trials in education research , 2002 .

[23]  R. Hodgson,et al.  A randomized controlled trial of a brief intervention after alcohol-related facial injury. , 2003, Addiction.

[24]  Thomas D. Cook,et al.  Objecting to the objections to using random assignment in educational research , 2001 .

[25]  R. Hood.  SOCIAL WORK IN PRISON , 1975 .

[26]  R. Clarke.  Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case Studies , 1992 .

[27]  R. Hullin,et al.  THE EFFECT OF TWO VARIETIES OF THE ADJOURNMENT PROCEDURE ON TRUANCY , 1983 .

[28]  B. Rawlings,et al.  Therapeutic community effectiveness: a systematic international review of therapeutic community treatment for people with personality disorders and mentally disordered offenders , 1999 .

[29]  David P. Farrington,et al.  Methodological Quality Standards for Evaluation Research , 2003 .

[30]  J P Shepherd,et al.  Effectiveness of toughened glassware in terms of reducing injury in bars: a randomised controlled trial , 2000, Injury prevention : journal of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention.

[31]  A. Folsom.  Reply to Dr , 2004 .

[32]  Farrington and Nuttal's “overcrowding and recidivism” , 1983 .

[33]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. , 1986, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[34]  D. Weisburd.  Ethical Practice and Evaluation of Interventions in Crime and Justice , 2003, Evaluation review.

[35]  R. Hullin,et al.  A Randomly Controlled Trial of Two Court Procedures in Truancy , 1979 .

[36]  R. F. Sletto,et al.  Prediction Methods in Relation to Borstal Training. , 1956 .

[37]  David P. Farrington,et al.  Randomized Experiments on Crime and Justice , 1983, Crime and Justice.

[38]  D. Farrington,et al.  A Feasibility Study into Using a Randomised Controlled Trial to Evaluate Treatment Pilots at HMP Whitemoor Home Office Online Report 14 / 02 , 2002 .

[39]  P. Howard,et al.  Evaluation of two intensive regimes for young offenders , 2002 .

[40]  L. T. Wilkins,et al.  Evaluation of penal measures , 1970 .

[41]  D. Farrington.  Experiments on Deviance with Special Reference to Dishonesty , 1979 .

[42]  Juliette Mott,et al.  Police Decisions for Dealing with Juvenile Offenders , 1983 .

[43]  W. Shadish,et al.  Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference , 2001 .

[44]  Stephen Scott,et al.  Multicentre controlled trial of parenting groups for childhood antisocial behaviour in clinical practice , 2001, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[45]  R. Hullin,et al.  Truancy and the courts: research note. , 1977, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[46]  Two non-reactive field experiments on stealing from a 'lost' letter. , 1979, The British journal of social and clinical psychology.

[47]  R. Hullin,et al.  Off School, In Court: An Experimental and Psychiatric Investigation of Severe School Attendance Problems , 1988 .

[48]  Is financial dishonesty a rational decision , 1977 .

[49]  I. Kolvin.  Help starts here: The maladjusted child in the ordinary school , 1986 .

[50]  T. Cook,et al.  Quasi-experimentation: Design & analysis issues for field settings , 1979 .

[51]  James O. Finckenauer,et al.  Well-Meaning Programs Can Have Harmful Effects! Lessons from Experiments of Programs Such as Scared Straight , 2000 .

[52]  Brandon C. Welsh,et al.  Family-based Prevention of Offending: A Meta-analysis , 2003 .

[53]  P. G. Lewis.  Reducing offending: An assessment of research evidence on ways of dealing with offending behaviour , 1998 .