ABSTRACT
The question of how to quantitatively model the diffusion and contraction of boot camps was one of the greatest challenges that had to be overcome in this research project. Decisions needed to be made about the most accurate ways to quantify political, economic, and social constructs to test their effects on boot camp adoption and abolition. These difficulties were compounded by the inherent challenges of turning deeply qualitative constructs-such as political ideology-into numerical variables. Additionally, policymaking is often a convoluted process and not all states adopted and abolished boot camps through straightforward legislative decisions, as the Appendix illustrates. Thus, when interpreting the quantitative results presented in this chapter, it is important to remember Grigsby’s (2009, p. 30) warning that “thinking scientifically about politics involves knowing the limits of science” to unravel complex social processes. Despite these limits, the quantitative results offer substantial insight into the deeply under-examined topics of criminal justice policymaking and diffusion (Ismaili, 2006; Klinger, 2003). Constructing these models also presented the first opportunity to empirically test many of the explanations about the spread and contraction of boot camps discussed in Chapter 4.
