Auditing the Auditors

Abstract:
This case focuses on the Seattle Community Accountability Program, designed to discourage juvenile crime by having offenders appear before neighborhood boards which can order them to make restitution. The program becomes mired in dispute between program evaluation experts from the Seattle City Council and the Law and Justice Planning Office of the city's Department of Human Resources. The city council must decide whether to continue the program based on evidence of performance -- evidence it's hard-pressed to be certain of. The case highlights many of the dilemmas of program evaluation in a public policy environment. It underscores the communication problems between evaluation technicians and elected officials, and provides an opportunity to discuss experimental program evaluation methodologies and their relevance in public organizations. The supplement (A) presents some definition of program evaluations and discusses the ways in which such evaluation differs from basic social science research. In addition, it poses a series of questions to help evaluators decide whether a particular evaluation is worth doing.