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Survey of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration's Restitution Experiment

Published: Jul 03, 1978. Publicly Released: Nov 17, 1981.
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Highlights

The objective of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration's (LEAA) restitution experiment was to determine the conditions under which restitution would be an effective tool in dealing with offenders in the criminal justice system. LEAA awarded seven discretionary grants to projects operating at various levels or settings within the criminal justice system. However, LEAA did not: (1) ensure that all program participants were aware of and agreed to the program's objectives before awarding the grants; (2) ensure that participants understood the methods that were to be used to achieve the objective; (3) ensure that grantees had adequate procedures to obtain required funds and staffing; (4) monitor projects so that ineffective projects could be provided with assistance or terminated; or (5) select the program evaluator before grants were awarded to facilitate the provision of technical assistance. As a result of the weaknesses in planning and managing the experiment, difficulties in implementing the projects, and failure to develop sufficient research data, program goals and objectives will not be met. As a consequence of these findings, two of the projects are being terminated; tighter requirements, conditions, and controls are being placed over three projects; and plans are being developed to strengthen preaward procedures for future grants.

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