Evaluating a Correctional Program

Details
Chose a US Correctional Institutional Program –
Under Introduction:
Describe briefly the correctional program you have chosen for your evaluation. In particular, specify the potential contribution this project could make to the penal system and the broader society by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the program.
Indicate why it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of the program and its cost efficiency.
Explain how you derive your evaluation criteria. You could, for example, research existing standards of recidivism and cost per resident in similar halfway houses. As you make your topic selection, consider how a theory such as strain theory could explain why the halfway house is not doing a proper job. The theory would help you offer improved directions for the program by suggesting how its resources might be more effectively allocated.
Under Literature Review:
Provide a brief summary of the article, focusing carefully on how the article will support your evaluation project. Provide two specific research questions that describe exactly what you want to find out about the effectiveness of the program.
Under Method of Research:
Design your own study by applying, for example, strain theory, and showing how the program does or does not structure an environment that enables residents to adapt to the broader social environment.
State the central evaluation question in one sentence.
Describe three reliable and valid measuring tools you would use to determine whether the program achieves its objectives effectively and efficiently.
Provide two criteria to evaluate the reasonableness of the program’s cost, such as:
A rate above 20 per cent recidivism while participants are in the program is far above standard.
Costs in excess of 1,000 dollars a week per resident services are excessive in comparison to costs at other similar facilities.
Describe precisely the method of data collection you would use to carry out your study in ethical ways, with minimal risk to the researcher and the participants and personnel of the program studied.
Present the types of questions you would ask.
Describe the personnel you would access.
Discuss how you would access quantitative data and how you would present the criteria you would use.
Present the concepts you would use.
Show how the theory helps you explain the achievements and the shortcomings of the program.
Show how you would provide for the security of your qualitative data.
Show how you would protect the security of your evaluation from any risk of undue harm.
Demonstrate how you would provide for the security of your qualitative data.
Show how the theory helps you explain the achievements and the shortcomings of the program.
Under Anticipated Findings:
Suggest what you imagine you would find if you actually implemented the study.
Explain how you would analyze the data using evaluative tools.
Suggest how these findings would relate to your research question.
Explain how you would present (write up) the results of your evaluation in the most lucid and compelling manner possible.
Indicate how you would analyze and interpret the evaluative data.
Under Discussion:
Describe how you would use theory to explain the findings you expect to obtain. That is, explain why the program does or does not work.
Identify at least one limitation of your own proposed project.
Provide policy proposals from your evaluation project to improve the operation of the program, or restructure it, or terminate it while proposing an alternative.

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