Collaborative evaluation of a criminal justice program

This paper describes lessons learned from a collaborative evaluation study based on empowerment evaluation. The underlying premise of empowerment evaluation is that by having the key stakeholders from the community involved in the evaluation process, there will be greater investment and willingness to utilize the results. The collaborators are Community Care Services (CCS), a non-profit community mental health and substance abuse services agency located in Lincoln Park, MI and Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti, MI) who evaluated CCS' M-COIT Program's effectiveness in reducing felony recidivism rates and inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations among its ex-offender consumers for the 2004-2005 time periods, using retrospective client record review. The M-COIT Program is an intensive, multi-disciplinary outpatient mental health and substance abuse treatment program for parolees who are mentally ill and/or have substance disorders. It is based on the National Program Standards for Assertive Community Treatment Programs with some modifications for providing services to the ex-offender population. Some of the lessons we learned from the collaboration are: 1) the need to establish a trusting relationship; 2) agree on expectations, study design, the data collection tool, and data analysis; 3) overcome biases; and 4) to develop a process to identify and resolve differences among disciplines (social work, psychology, nursing and health administration faculty). CCS will be using the study results to strengthen its M-COIT Program. The study outcomes have the potential to effect policy changes at the county level regarding treatment needs of the ex-offender population.