INTERMEDIATE SANCTIONS: A POLICY ANALYSIS
This research develops a policy analysis of the use of intermediate sanctions in the administration of criminal justice. The most severe sentence in non capital punishment cases in the United States is incarceration in prison, while the least severe sentence is probation (Langan, 1994). An intermediate sanction is a sentence that is less severe than incarceration in prison, but more severe than probation.
Public policies are the guidelines for public action. They prescribe, in general terms, (a) objectives, and (b) the means by which those objectives will be pursued. Policy analysis is the application of a variety of political and cognitive strategies to the formulation or evaluation of a public policy (Starling, 1993). Policy analysis is not based in a single discipline. Political, organizational, sociological, technological, and economic issues are addressed in most policy analyses. "In policy analysis one of the keys to judging expert testimony is to recognize the biases inherent in single-discipline answers" (Starling, 1993, p. 11). Similarly, an excessive reliance on either normative or quantitative approaches to evaluation typically produces ineffective policy analyses.
It is important to remember that any public policy is a part of a wider political system. Thus, an effective policy analysis looks beyond the narrow scope of the immediate issue to the ways in which a proposed policy will affect or the ways in which an implemented policy has affected the entire system as well as how the policy will affect or has affected the immediate issue.
Policy analysis, thus, refers to an analysis of the "determinants, characteristics, and implications of public policies and programs" (Positer, 1992, p. 25). The emphasis in policy analysis in on the relationship between (a) the content of policies, and (b) the expected outcomes of the policies (Langbein, 1995).
This policy ana...