JRSA - Projects

The field of crime victim legal services has been identified as a priority area of victim services by OVC. However, the field of victim legal services has lacked a clear, unified conceptual framework and theory of change defining what constitutes “success” in delivering these services. The development of these core resources will provide essential grounding for evaluation across all forms of victim legal services.

The first phase, conducting a formative evaluation and evaluability assessment, has been completed. The partners are currently planning the second and third phases, process and outcome evaluations.

This project, led by the Justice Research and Statistics Association, is a collaborative partnership with leading practitioner organization the National Crime Victim Law Institute, subject matter experts across multiple areas of victim legal services, and three local victims’ rights legal clinics: Arizona Voice for Crime Victims, the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center, and the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center.

PHASE ONE: A FORMATIVE EVALUATION AND EVALUABILITY ASSESSMENT OF CRIME VICTIM LEGAL SERVICES

A formative evaluation helps to clarify a program’s purpose, processes, potential outcome measures, and readiness for process and outcome evaluations. This type of evaluation is commonly used as programs are developing but can also be used more generally to set the stage for the more rigorous evaluation designs.

Hear from the lead research and practitioner partners about what they’ve learned in carrying out this work.

Phase One Steps:

Step 1. Develop or define the program model, looking at the resources, services, and expected benefits.

We worked with a group of legal service providers and crime survivors to map a conceptual framework for this area of victim assistance, which has lacked one until now. We included a broad range of legal services in this framework—those assisting with victims’ rights, protective orders, family law, immigration law, and more. The broad conceptual framework sets out what victim legal service programs are doing (activities), what they expect to achieve in the short term (objectives), and the impact those services are expected to have in the longer term (outcomes).

After creating this prototype conceptual model for victim legal services generally, we worked with the three victim legal clinics named above to refine that model to capture each site’s particular activities, objectives, and intended outcomes.

Step 2. Assess operational reach–the volume and types of clients the program is designed to serve, whom the program actually serves, and how services are delivered.

We worked with the three legal clinic sites to map their program flow in connecting with and serving crime victims. We interviewed staff members and reviewed program materials to get a clear picture of their operations.

Each site was found to have a standard and routine process, which we were able to describe in detail.

This project happened to coincide with the Covid-19 Pandemic. The project took the opportunity to learn from the three sites about the direct impacts of the crisis on their programs. READ MORE.

Step 3. Build research capacity—take stock of the program’s data sources, capacity, and quality to help build capacity for program monitoring and evaluation.

We worked with the sites to identify the data needed to determine whether they were making progress on their own objectives. We examined how their current data systems operated, when and how data is collected, how they ensure data quality, and whether they can easily examine their own data. We also considered whether their data collection systems could be adjusted to collect new data to capture desired outcomes agreed upon from the conceptual model and improve the quality of the measures collected.

We then pilot tested a data collection protocol to see how easy or challenging it would be for the sites to collect and report data on their activities and achievement of outcomes. As part of this step, we created an implementation guide and a webinar with instructions for data collection and provided technical assistance throughout the pilot test. After six months of pilot testing, we examined the data collected, interviewed site staff about their experiences during the pilot test, and analyzed the workability of refining the data collection in the process and outcome evaluation phases.

Interested in joining the conversation? Come join us on our discussion boards, where you can talk to colleagues and the researchers about this important topic.

This work was produced under grant number 2018-ZD-CX-0005 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this presentation are those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

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WHAT CONSTITUTES SUCCESS? EVALUATING LEGAL SERVICES FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME