Implementation Science in Criminal Justice – American Perspectives Moving from Evidence to Practice

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | TuneIn | RSS

This episode of the IN-CJ podcast shares the American Perspectives webinar on Implementation Science, recorded on 9th June 2026. The discussion follows the earlier European Perspectives session and turns attention to what implementation looks like in a large United States community supervision system.

Chaired by Michael Nail, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Supervision, the webinar brought together Scott Maurer, Chief of Staff at the Georgia Department of Community Supervision; Dr Nick Powell, Director of Research and Strategic Planning at the same department; Dr Frances Chen of Georgia State University; and Dr Tonya Van Deinse of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

The central question was direct: once criminal justice agencies have evidence about what works, how do they make that evidence work in practice?

Michael Nail opened the conversation by noting that criminal justice has made considerable progress in identifying evidence-based practices. The harder challenge is operational. Research does not implement itself. Policy does not automatically become practice. A programme may look persuasive in a report, but it still has to be delivered by real people, in real organisations, under real pressure.

Scott Maurer grounded the conversation in the scale of Georgia’s community supervision system. He described Georgia as the largest community supervision system in the United States, with around 200,000 people under felony probation or parole supervision and approximately 2,000 staff. The size and complexity of the system mean that implementation cannot be treated as a simple roll-out. What works in one judicial circuit may not work in another. Local conditions, competing priorities, staff capacity and organisational culture all affect whether an intervention can be adopted with consistency and credibility.

One of the strongest themes in the discussion was the danger of assuming that evidence-based practice is “plug and play”. Tonya Van Deinse emphasised that implementation science asks agencies to pay attention to context. An intervention cannot simply be lifted from one jurisdiction and dropped into another without careful adaptation. The task is to understand which parts of a programme must remain faithful to the evidence, and which parts can be adjusted to fit local circumstances. This was described as “adaptive fidelity”, a phrase that captured much of the discussion.

Frances Chen brought the discussion to the level of frontline delivery. She noted that risk assessment tools, motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioural programmes and other practice models ultimately depend on officers who have to use them in everyday supervision. That means implementation must take account of officer stress, role conflict, organisational demands and the practical conditions under which staff are asked to work. If the delivery mechanism is under strain, then implementation will also be under strain.

This point is important for criminal justice leaders. Staff wellbeing is not only a human resources concern. In this discussion, it was framed as mission-critical. The capacity of officers to use evidence-informed approaches depends partly on whether they are supported, supervised and given workable conditions. Frances Chen argued for better measurement of what actually happens during day-to-day practice, rather than relying only on officer self-report or final outcomes. She also pointed to the value of examining organisational stressors that can realistically be changed, including the quality of supervisory support.

Nick Powell connected these points to strategy. He argued that strategy and research are inseparable, and suggested that evidence-based practice should be treated as a verb rather than a noun. In other words, it is not a fixed object that can be installed once and left alone. It is a continuing process of testing, learning, adjusting and improving.

This led to one of the most practical observations in the webinar: strategic plans should be written in pencil, not pen. Timelines matter because they provide focus and accountability, but they should not replace the mission. Where timelines become more important than outcomes, agencies risk launching programmes that are technically delivered but not meaningfully embedded. Implementation science offers a way to hold ambition and realism together.

The panel also discussed the role of leadership. Scott Maurer argued that leaders must be willing to say no when an idea does not fit current priorities or when the timing is wrong. This does not mean dismissing innovation. It means recognising that too many simultaneous initiatives can fragment attention and make implementation weaker. He also stressed that leaders must create room for mistakes, provided those mistakes are used for learning rather than repeated without reflection.

Tonya Van Deinse described implementation as a multi-level process. Agencies need to assess readiness before adopting or launching a new policy or programme. That assessment may involve formal tools, but it also requires conversation, trust and knowledge of the organisation. Middle managers, informal leaders and respected practitioners all matter. In some cases, the people with the most influence are not necessarily those with the most senior titles.

The questions raised through the webinar chat drew out further practical lessons. Asked how agencies can secure buy-in from officers, Michael Nail argued that leaders must explain the “why” from the outset. Staff may not immediately agree with a change, but they deserve to understand its purpose. Scott Maurer added that frontline staff need to be involved early, not merely informed once decisions have already been made. Frances Chen noted that buy-in is strengthened when evidence is generated from within the agency itself through pilots, feedback and local testing.

Another audience question asked how jurisdictions should think differently about implementation. The panel’s answer was that success should not be defined by going live. Launch is not the end of implementation. It is one stage in a longer process that includes adaptation, sustainability and review. External events, funding changes, leadership shifts and operational pressures can all affect whether a programme continues to work over time.

For IN-CJ’s international audience, the value of this conversation lies in its practical realism. The webinar does not present implementation science as a technical formula. It presents it as a disciplined way of thinking about how research, leadership, organisational culture and frontline practice interact. It also shows why comparative conversations matter. The Georgia example is specific, but the issues are widely recognisable across criminal justice systems: scale, local variation, staff pressure, leadership, readiness, adaptation and accountability.

The podcast will be useful for practitioners, researchers, policy makers and professional advocates who are interested in how criminal justice systems can move beyond evidence-based language and towards evidence-informed delivery. It asks listeners to consider not only what works, but where it works, for whom it works, under what conditions, and what has to be learned when it does not work as expected.

Above all, the discussion suggests that implementation science is not a final stage after research has been completed. It is part of the work of justice development itself. It helps agencies become learning organisations, capable of testing ideas, listening to practitioners, using evidence carefully and adapting practice without losing sight of purpose.

The IN-CJ webinar series continues to create space for these comparative conversations, linking research, policy and practice across jurisdictions. This episode offers a clear invitation to keep asking how criminal justice knowledge can be translated into better systems, better supervision and more thoughtful forms of professional practice.