All too often, the gap between what research tells us what works with youthful offenders and what actual practice is seems too hard to close.  Evidence based programs, while useful, are often viewed as too costly or too limited to significantly alter the course of a jurisdiction’s practice.  And evidence-based practices, less rigorously studied, often face the kind of difficult hurdles that any systemic change encounters – time, cost, and tradition.  The Georgetown Public Policy Institute’s Center for Juvenile Justice Reform has recently released a good summary paper, Improving the Effectiveness of Juvenile Justice Programs: A New Perspective on Evidence-Based Practice, which takes the concepts of evidence-based practice/programs and integrates them with some of these system-change challenges.  Going further, the paper takes us back to the framework of the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Offenders as a way to remind us that it can’t be all about implementing that limited number of programs that have climbed the “evidence-based mountain”.  Using research to tell us what works makes sense, but change is a process that requires a larger vision and framework. This conceptualization is a step in the right direction – it’s unfortunate, however, that there is really no reference to the Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ) model that so effectively translates delinquency-speak into readily supported goals of accountability, community protection, and competency development.  Maybe that’s next.