Criminal Justice Knowledge Production

What does it mean for a criminal justice intervention to be effective ? Why is it important to know? For whom? How does government emphasis on the impact of criminal justice programs affect the design and funding of programs? And what does this focus on effectiveness mean for research priorities and methods? This subject considers questions such as these in exploring how, why, and for whom criminal justice ‘evidence’ or ‘knowledge’ is produced. In this subject you will be asked to identify a particular criminal justice program or intervention (we will look at a range of examples), and to design an approach to discover whether or not it ‘works’ – thinking about how, why and for whom .