Exploring change in local criminal justice systems: An examination of the implementation of the Justice Reinvestment at the Local Level model in three U.S. counties

Tough on crime policies in the U.S. began to emerge in the 1970s and steeply escalated through the 1980s and 1990s, prompting massive growth of correctional populations and criminal justice costs. Although many of these policy and legislative reforms were enacted at the federal and state levels, they have trickled down and greatly affected localities across the country. The recent economic downturn has exerted additional pressures on local governments. These factors have prompted the development of a number of planned change strategies designed to curb the escalating growth and related costs in criminal justice systems. One such approach, Justice Reinvestment at the Local Level (JRLL), targets the implementation of a planned change model within local criminal justice systems. This dissertation employs qualitative and quantitative data from three case studies to test if the JRLL planned change strategy supports the Lewin-White planned change schema. Lewin's model involves three phases: unfreezing, changing, and refreezing. White advances this three-step process, arguing that for the purposes of full system change the final phase of Lewin's model requires a commitment to an iterative and experimental process. This study analyzed data from two waves of stakeholder interviews and surveys to assess if change was evident in areas pertaining to the Lewin-White model. Mixed results from the three JRLL case studies are somewhat consistent with this schema, and serve as an intermediate benchmark for success, indicating that the JRLL model has promise to affect full system change in the three study sites and potentially elsewhere as well.