A Decoupled System: Federal Criminal Justice and the Structural Limits of Transformation

HOPE Springs Eternal

“…If all criminal justice agencies were provided with a manifold budget, then funds might be reprogrammed from one part (e.g., jails, where the costs associated with overall bed‐day occupancies are theorized to decrease under HOPE) to another (e.g., increased costs of expanded drug testing under HOPE). But because criminal justice agencies do not typically pool their budgets, it is possible for one agency to enhance its effectiveness by externalizing its costs onto others (Oleson, ). For example, evaluation of HOPE revealed that the program was popular with judges, defense lawyers, and probationers, but some prosecutors disliked the lenience of HOPE sanctions and many courtroom staff complained that HOPE created additional work (Hawken and Kleiman, ).…”

“…The example of a HOPE court issuing increased numbers of warrants for local law enforcement to execute is a good example of decoupling: “situations in which stakeholders make decisions that have financial implications for the larger system, but not for that stakeholder's own bottom line” (Oleson, : 396). If legislators, excited by the RCT data from HOPE, fund a local court to create a SCF program, but do not fund local law enforcement for their own collateral increase in workloads, some aspect of law enforcement work will likely slip.…”