The Legitimacy of Change: Adopting/Adapting, Implementing and Sustaining Reforms within Community Corrections...

Area of Science:

• Criminal Justice
• Organizational Behavior
• Public Administration

Background:

• Evidence-based reforms are common in criminal justice.
• Sustainability of these reforms is understudied.
• Implementation challenges are known, but long-term use is unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine factors affecting the continued use of evidence-based reforms in criminal justice.
• To understand the sustainability of organizational reforms.

Main Methods:

• Longitudinal data collection from criminal legal staff.
• Analysis guided by an organizational change framework.
• Case studies of reform implementation.

Main Results:

• Sustainability of reforms is linked to organizational goals like legitimacy, efficiency, and effectiveness.
• While reforms were initially seen as legitimate, adoption varied significantly.
• Only two of the studied sites continued using the reform post-study.

Conclusions:

• Legitimacy is a critical factor for the routinization of new practices in criminal justice.
• Efforts to build legitimacy are crucial for sustaining organizational change initiatives.
• Rationalizing solely on efficiency and effectiveness may not ensure long-term reform adoption.