When Bad News Arrives: Project HOPE in a Post-Factual World

Abstract

On the basis of limited empirical evidence, advocates of Project HOPE (Hawaii's Opportunity Probation with Enforcement) have succeeded in spreading the model to a reported 31 states and 160 locations. A recent randomized control experiment across four sites has revealed negative results: no overall effect on recidivism. In this context, we examine how prominent advocates of Project HOPE have coped with the arrival of this "bad news." Despite null findings from a "gold standard" evaluation study, advocates continue to express confidence in the HOPE model and to support its further implementation. The risk thus exists that Project HOPE is entering a postfactual world in which diminishing its appeal-let alone its falsification-is not possible. It is the collective responsibility of corrections researchers to warn policy makers that the HOPE model is not a proven intervention and may not be effective in many agencies. It is also our responsibility to create a science of community supervision that can establish more definitively best practices in this area.

A Criminological Fly in the Ointment: Specialty Courts and the Generality of Deviance

“…The task of encouraging a treatment philosophy has arguably been made even more difficult in recent years with the revival of faith in the power of punishment in the form of community supervision programs like Project HOPE (Hawaii's Opportunity with Probation Enforcement) and swift, certain, and fair (SCF) punishment (Hawken & Kleiman, 2009). These programs have become wildly popular in recent years across the country, spreading to over 160 locations across over 30 states (Cullen, Pratt, Turanovic, & Butler, 2018). And like the conservative-led get-tough approaches of the past, the HOPE/SCF model assumes that a stint of incarceration-what might be termed "jail therapy"-will cure offenders of their criminal ills (Kleiman, 2016).…”

“…The difference, however, is that HOPE/SCF is the brainchild of liberal scholars and practitioners-a program that was developed and evangelized by those who are more progressive ideologically (Cullen, Manchak, & Duriez, 2014; see also the discussion by Cullen et al, 2018). Thus, as progressive policymakers adopt a liberal version of "punishment works," a key group who may have otherwise been sympathetic to embracing a treatment philosophy might now be harder to convince that it has merit.…”

Prisons or Problem-Solving: Does the Public Support Specialty Courts?

“…Similar to other criminal justice innovations (e.g., boot camps, intensive supervision programs, Project HOPE), problem-solving courts have been adopted widely based on limited empirical evidence (see Cullen & Jonson, 2017;Cullen, Pratt, Turanovic, & Butler, 2018). As a pragmatic enterprise, these courts are driven by local concerns and interestsand not by criminological theory or rigorous research (Boldt, 2014).…”

Benefits and Costs of “Swift, Certain, and Fair” Supervision

“…Last, as boring as it sounds, "treatment as usual" (TAU) poses an extraordinary and unusual array of research and policy challenges that should not be minimized or ignored by the field (Cullen, Pratt, Turanovic, and Butler, 2018). To illustrate, meta-analytic results from the mental health field have demonstrated that the size of a treatment effect is contingent on the control condition, which is often diverse (Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 2017;Watts, Turnell, Kladnitski, Newby, and Andrews, 2015).…”

“…Although SCF is a hotly debated and polarizing intervention among scholars (Cullen, Pratt, and Turanovic, ; Cullen, Pratt, Turanovic, and Butler, ; Hawken, ; Kleiman, ; Kleiman, Kilmer, and Fisher, ), I read the empirical research base as evidence that reveals both cause for concern as well as for celebration of SCF. Concern clearly emerges from the lack of definitive effectiveness of SCF as implemented among a heterogenous population (Cullen et al., , ; Drake, ) . Additionally, SCF contains programmatic elements that have not been favorably supported by the broader research evidence in community corrections.…”