2024 · Book chapter · English
Systems of Change: Communities That Care
Fagan, A. A.
Fagan, A. A. (2024). Systems of Change: Communities That Care. In The Oxford handbook of evidence-based crime and justice policy (pp. 407–423). Oxford University Press. doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197618110.013.21
Summary
Chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Evidence-Based Crime and Justice Policy presenting CTC to a criminal-justice policy audience. Fagan starts from a gap familiar across Europe: evidence-based interventions that prevent crime exist in numbers, yet many communities keep funding untested or ineffective strategies. CTC is described as a system built deliberately to close that gap – a structured process with training and coaching that raises a coalition’s knowledge of evidence-based interventions, its willingness to adopt them and the quality with which it implements them to prevent youth substance use, delinquency and violence. The chapter summarises the evidence that CTC is itself evidence-based, citing the community-randomised trial and several quasi-experimental evaluations that found increased use of tested interventions and reductions in youth problem behaviour, and argues that wide implementation as an installation mechanism for such interventions could lower crime rates. A concise, current overview by a lead trial investigator, useful for briefing policy-makers.