Evaluation Needs of Crime Control Planners, Decisionmakers, and Policymakers Are Not Being Met

Since 1969 the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) has awarded over $5 billion to state and local governments to reduce crime and delinquency. There have been various attempts to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of programs receiving these funds.

Evaluation activities of LEAA and the states have been inadequate to meet planning, decisionmaking, and policymaking needs of many users concerned with the intergrovenmental block grant crime control program. For example, the amount and types of evaluation work have not been adequate, the quality of evaluation work was questionable, evaluation information needs of users were not being met, resources allocated for evaluation were inadequate, organization of evaluation functions lacked direction and effective management controls, and better coordination of evaluation program efforts was needed. LEAA should place greater emphasis upon building evaluation into programs and projects before they are started at the federal, state, and local levels, and exercise greater leadership.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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