I would like to respond to one reader who emailed me about a previous column on the subject of the evaluation of boot camps. The reader generously invited me to visit his boot camp, but implied that until I did, I could not possibly have an opinion about his or any other boot camp. Let me say now, I would be delighted to accept the offer to tour the boot camp, and I'm sure I would learn a great deal by doing so, but my visiting the boot camp is completely irrelevant to any social scientific evaluation of boot camps. In fact, the suggestion that my personal visit has anything to do with the evaluation of the effectiveness of the boot camps misses the point entirely.

The usual measure of the "effectiveness" of criminal justice programs is recidivism. There is a very good reason for this. If we, as taxpayers, spend money on a criminal justice program we deserve to have some objective evidence that the program will decrease the amount of crime. For example, if the boot camps can be evaluated and shown to produce a lower recidivism rate than probation, then we have some evidence that they are worth our money. If, however, they are left unevaluated, or when evaluated are shown to decrease recidivism no more than probation, or simple release, we are throwing our money down a rat hole.

When a prosecutor goes into criminal court, s/he cannot merely assert that a defendant is guilty, evidence must be presented, and we as the public deserve evidence about these programs, not just somebody's opinion. I might visit this boot camp. I might be impressed and very much like the staff and the participants. The staff might assure me, and might believe, that the program is effective. The participants might tell me that they benefited greatly from the boot camp. But, none of this would make a whit of difference in whether or not the camp was really "effective", i.e., produced a recidivism rate that was lower than probation, or simply release.

Social science sets up objective criteria for evaluating programs, or criteria that is objective as you can get in the social world. They do so to avoid the subjective evaluations of individuals. Just because I might like the staff and participants of the boot camp, and perhaps thought the camp to be effective doesn't mean that, based on my individual subjective judgement the tax payers of Florida should dump millions of dollars into them. The public has a right to demand the most objective criteria of success available of this program or any social program. It is, after all, our money. The only point I intended to raise in the initial article was that objective evaluations are very difficult to do, and therefore, much of the time we are spending a lot of money on programs that have not been adequately evaluated.

Unless there is an agreed upon objective criteria with which to measure the effectiveness of these programs, the public is left prey to any politician, any policy maker, any program director who "says" his or her program "works." The public needs to start demanding facts, evidence. But, sometimes it's hard for everybody to remember that the government works for us, not the other way around.