Abstract
The sociologist Charles Perrow offers the phrase “gross malfunctioning analysis” as a way to promote a further understanding of the reasons why initiatives fail in organizations, and more importantly, what we can learn from failure that allows for greater analysis of organizational decisions. This latter premise serves as the primary reason why Berman and Fox wrote this little book. The authors' goal is to learn from our mistakes and move forward, not to continue to do the same thing over and over with the hope that something productive will occur.
Berman and Fox provide some fascinating examples of large-scale efforts designed to address mammoth crime problems that ultimately failed. The initiatives were in areas that have traditionally seemed impossible to solve: gun violence among youth, drug usage, youth homicide, ineffective parole operations, celebrated cases and the creation of draconian legislation, and drug treatment education for youth. The authors explore these topics through various concrete efforts conducted in diverse communities over the past 20 years. Their conclusion is both sobering and unsettling (at one level): grand criminal justice reforms usually fail, and the more global and grandiose the initial claims of potential success, the more we learn later that success is not possible or highly unlikely, at least not in the way comprehended by either researchers or practitioners. There may be other goals achieved through the effort that were not an original or stated goal, but we learned after program implementation and a period of operation other details and facts regarding program impact. This is an important point made by Berman and Fox.
The authors explicate the four “principal themes” of failure: not all failure is alike, failure is rarely black and white, politics plays an important role in defining success or failure, and implementation is as important as ideas. For the experienced researcher, these themes are well understood. For the criminal justice practitioner, what plays most heavily on them is politics. Anyone who has been around criminal justice administrators for long periods of time learns the trite and cynical phrase “it is all politics.”
Through their description of various program efforts and subsequent failures, Berman and Fox provide some interesting and useful thoughts on why programs failed and how we can learn from failure. This is valuable. Where the analysis falls short, however, is the portrayal of the complexities of the political process. They state, for example, how one innovative and politically astute professor was able to put off the political tendency of legislators to create draconian legislation after a horrific and celebrated case in the state of Connecticut. I have no doubt the professor’s input and experience were invaluable to moving legislation beyond the emotions of the situation to create prudent sentencing policy, but the political process is not about individual effort, but instead, rests on collective response. Politics is a collective endeavor not an individual game. Legislation rises and falls with political coalitions. It would have been nice to see how political coalitions formed and aligned with this professor to get desired legislation passed in the aftermath of the horrible crime that led to initial coalition-building promoting harsher sentences for repeat criminals. Little of this analysis is present.
Similarly, I believe it is possible to analyze the other examples of criminal justice failure described in the book using the same focus. Some possible questions are the following: Who were the entities outside of the St. Louis Police Department against the consent search program after its apparent initial success? What were insurance providers saying about drug treatment courts in Denver and Minneapolis at the beginning and during early operations? In addition to individual jealousies, how did collective jealousies erode support for Operation Ceasefire? Who were the pivotal actors and groups working to sustain parole failure in California (besides the correctional officers union)? What about organized support, and then later criticism and removal of support, for the DARE program?
The answers to these questions would have led to a more thorough analysis of politics and coalition-building in both support and opposition of the projects described. It is clear that the other themes suggested by Berman and Fox regarding criminal justice failure mentioned above are important but the politics question deserves greater attention. Through an analysis of coalition action, we can learn much more about criminal justice failure, and how criminal justice researchers and practitioners can appropriately respond. For the researcher, failure is a way to reconceptualize a question; for the criminal justice practitioner, failure can refocus efforts and resources to respond more effectively to an issue or problem.
Berman and Fox conclude the book with statements regarding mistakes made in criminal justice reform initiatives. These mistakes are to be taken seriously, such as a lack of self-reflection, defining success too narrowly, thinking rational inquiries will provide panacea solutions to crime problems, expecting too much from criminal justice reform efforts, failing to navigate politics, planning in isolation, and taking a top-down approach to implementing change. These are all worthwhile revelations learned from past criminal justice failures.
The authors also provide lessons to be learned from criminal justice failures. I will not explicate these lessons here, but I will say that this little book begins an inquiry that can lead others to pursue criminal justice failure as a legitimate area of inquiry, a value to both the researcher and the criminal justice practitioner. For beginning this inquiry, Berman and Fox are to be commended. It is now the obligation for others to pursue criminal justice failure more comprehensively such that the status quo is consistently being questioned, an outcome clearly favored by the authors.