Science and Policy Have to Go Hand In Hand, Essay Example

It is true that science and policy have to go hand in hand, and in order to predict the effectiveness of a certain program, one has to keep in mind that research can yield varying results in terms of desirability. Receiving a negative outcome of research does not always doom a program or a policy to a failure, since the objectives of research or the expected outcomes of a policy may be wrongly formulated. Hence, research always helps to achieve the goal of both policy and research – to identify the real-life impact of the policy, and then to decide whether it is necessary for the community, and whether it is worth paying the taxpayer money for. The reason for the need to conduct continuous evaluation research is that policy maintenance and promotion is usually highly costly, and some ineffective programs can be dropped for the sake of allocating scarce funds to more effective and more necessary policies. Hence, evaluation research should be an indispensible part of policy formation and decision-making in criminal justice.