All of WSIPP's research is published on our website. The Publications page includes every report we've released—from our founding in 1983 to the present. Each report entry includes the title, publication date, abstract, any available supplemental materials, and a downloadable PDF.
WSIPP reports are not updated after publication, and any report older than two years is designated with an “Archived” label.
To explore our benefit-cost and meta-analytic findings, please visit the Benefit-Cost section of the website.
Use the search fields below to find specific publications that match certain criteria. If you want to find other information on our website that is not publications, you can use the search field in the navigation bar at the top, or click here to search the entire website.
Search Results
Found 584 results
Washington's Coordination of Services Program for Juvenile Offenders: Outcome Evaluation and Benefit-Cost Analysis (Archived)
Danielle Fumia, Elizabeth Drake, Lijian He - September 2015
Coordination of Services (COS) is an educational program for low-risk juvenile offenders that provides information about services available in the community. The program is designed to help juvenile offenders avoid further involvement with the criminal justice system. COS currently serves about 600 youth per year in Washington State. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) first evaluated COS in 2004 following its first year of implementation. As part of ongoing work to identify research- and evidence-based programming in juvenile justice, WSIPP re-evaluated COS to determine its current impact on recidivism. Based on the results from both of WSIPP’s evaluations of COS, we estimate that the program reduces recidivism by about 3.5 percentage points (from 20% to 16.5%).
Estimating Potential Cost Savings from Paying Parental Caregivers of Children with Developmental Disabilities: Preliminary Report
Rebecca Goodvin, Cory Briar - December 2025
The 2025 Washington State Legislature directed the Washington State Institute for Public Policy to estimate the potential cost savings to the state if a policy were adopted allowing parents or other legally responsible individuals to become paid caregivers to their minor children with intellectual or developmental disability (I/DD).
In this preliminary report, we provide background on services and policy proposals in Washington. Additionally, we summarize our plans to quantify potential cost savings under a paid parental caregiver policy. Our final report, due November 2026, will present estimates of potential cost savings that could result from a paid parental caregivers policy. Specifically, we will examine the potential for a change in state costs based on families’ use of public benefits, children’s healthcare costs, or children’s out-of-home placements.
Evaluation of Washington's 1996 Juvenile Court Program (Early Intervention Program) for High-risk, First-time Offenders: Final Report (Archived)
Robert Barnoski - April 2003
The 1996 Washington State Legislature appropriated $2.35 million for a program called the juvenile court “Early Intervention Program” (EIP). The program’s goal was to prevent high-risk, first-time juvenile offenders from becoming further entrenched in the court system. Funds were awarded to 12 juvenile courts for the 1996 biennium on a competitive basis. At the request of the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (Institute) conducted a study to determine if the EIP resulted in reduced recidivism. In early 1998, the Institute examined six-month outcomes and found that EIP produced no significant difference in recidivism rates. In the 1998 session, the Legislature discontinued funding the EIP, shifting the funds to research-based programs in Washington’s newly enacted Community Juvenile Accountability Act. This report confirms the Institute’s earlier findings that the Early Intervention Program did not show a statistically significant reduction in recidivism.
Assessing the Impact of Prison Visitation on Adults Confined in Washington State: Contact Visits, Prison Infractions, and Recidivism
Corey Whichard, Micah McFeely - December 2025
During a contact visit, incarcerated individuals meet face-to-face with visitors in a designated area where limited physical contact is allowed. Although past research suggests that participation in contact visits is associated with improved outcomes (e.g., fewer infractions, lower recidivism), there is no published research on contact visits in Washington. We analyzed records from a comprehensive database of all contact visits in Washington prisons between 2008 and 2023 to answer three research questions: (1) Who gets visited? (2) Does visitation impact prison infractions? (3) Does visitation impact recidivism?
We found that about 48% of incarcerated individuals received at least one contact visit during their prison stay. The most powerful predictor of visitation is travel time. Individuals confined in facilities located a short drive from their county of conviction were much more likely to receive visits. We also found that visitation has a complex relationship with whether individuals violate prison rules (i.e., infractions). Visits cause a decrease in violent infractions (e.g., fighting) but an increase in trading infractions (e.g., sharing/loaning items). The risk of receiving a serious infraction dramatically declines during the weeks leading up to a contact visit, increases immediately after the visit, then gradually returns to baseline levels within a few weeks. Finally, we found no evidence that visitation impacts recidivism.
