TriaL aNd ErrOr: faiLurE aNd iNNOVaTiON iN CrimiNaL JuSTiCE rEfOrm

Criminal justice success stories — for example, the sustained reduction in crime in major U.S. cities during the past fifteen years — are poured over by officials from around the world in an effort to distill the lessons and replicate the accomplishments . Best practice manuals, providing protocols intended to guarantee success, are in abundant supply . At the same time, in the criminal justice world, failure is still a whispered word . Following the burst of the dot .com bubble, failure has become a hot topic in corporate America . In fact, Business Week magazine devoted a recent cover story to the lessons of failure . The idea of confronting failure is not just the preserve of the private sector; from the U .S . Army to academic hospitals, other professions are learning from failure, as well . This paper seeks to extend this study into the realm of criminal justice reform . Rather than focusing attention on well-known achievements in the field, therefore, this “red paper” — the product of semistructured interviews with criminal justice experts, researchers and practitioners, as well as a review of the literature on failure — seeks instead to provoke debate as to why some criminal justice reforms work and some do not . This exploration is not about failures of incompetence or corruption — these kinds of failures tend to be well-documented by the media (and contribute to a generally risk-averse environment) . Rather, this paper is about the kinds of failures in which well-intended efforts fall short of their objectives: the enforcement strategy that criminals ignore, the compliance monitoring scheme that doesn’t reduce re-offending or the seemingly successful job training program for ex-offenders that suddenly closes up shop . This examination is intended for anyone interested in criminal justice reform but, in particular, seeks to reach local policymakers — probation officials, court administrators, leaders of state and local criminal justice agencies . By discussing failure openly, this paper seeks to help foster an environment that promotes new thinking and the testing of new ideas . By identifying lessons that could inform criminal justice practice going forward, this paper seeks to ensure that, at the very least, tomorrow’s innovators are less likely to make the same mistakes as today’s . The bulk of this inquiry, therefore, looks at the causes that contribute to failure . But there is a threshold question to ask about failure: is failure inherently good? Well, in one sense, it appears to be: Failure is a necessary by-product of innovation . The private sector, sciences and even the arts have long understood this fact; they tend to factor failure as a cost of doing business — consider the massive R&D funding by pharmaceuticals that includes substantial allowTriaL aNd ErrOr: faiLurE aNd iNNOVaTiON iN CrimiNaL JuSTiCE rEfOrm