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Abstract
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Research Summary:
Comprehensive Community Initiatives (CCIs) attempt to build collaborative networks within the community and enhance the community's collaborative social problem-solving capacity to address specific criminal justice problems. In this paper, we use network analysis methods to operationalize the collaborative problem-solving capacity in two sites involved in the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile Offenders (Wilson and Howell, 1995). The problems addressed in this paper originally emerged while conducting a national process evaluation of the Comprehensive Strategy. Both overall and organizational-level network measures are used to operationalize the collaborative problem-solving capability in the planning and implementation phases of the Comprehensive Strategies. Policy Implications:
An important policy implication of our work is that sustaining connections with even a handful of organizations can be difficult. CCIs represent complex systems consisting of multiple organizations collaborating over time under varying constraints and opportunities. Understanding such dynamic complexity is important if one is to recognize the difficulties inherent in sustaining such collaborative networks. For the process evaluation of the Comprehensive Strategy, participants provided concrete feedback about how to sustain the collaborative networks into the implementation phase. Specific feedback included: (1) providing greater upfront clarity of funding, (2) learning from other "exemplary" sites, and (3) developing a clearer definition of community and funder roles. We leverage results from other parts of the implemented multimethod research design to both interpret and validate the network results.
Language: en |