ABSTRACT
‘Knowing why a programme succeeds or fails is even more important than knowing that it does’ (Feuerstein, 1986, p. 7). In order to establish whether any organisational intervention, change process, training programme or system is effective, it is required to be formally assessed. An accurate evaluation consists of several components, but at its most basic, it assesses whether the intervention has resulted in an improvement in performance. On the surface, evaluations are therefore quite simplistic: comparing performance pre- and post-intervention. Such before and after evaluations can be, therefore, easy to perform and the produced assessment will likewise be equally simplistic. Conducting an evaluation that is of more value requires the consideration of finer details of evidence, for example: Which specific performance indicators are being assessed? Whose opinions will be collected? How much change is required to demonstrate any significant improvement? What time period of change should be assessed? Increasingly criminal justice system organisations are adopting evidence-based practice approaches in which evaluation plays a critical role. This chapter discusses the complexities involved in performing organisational evaluations and highlights some successful examples of evaluations conducted within criminal justice workplaces.
