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The following policy brief is tended to inform The Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, regarding three areas: gun control, sex offender policy, and drug courts policy. A brief description of each policy will be given and sex offender policy will be evaluated by utilizing the 5-stage evaluation hierarchy presented by Mears (2010).
Gun Control Policy
Gun ownership is widespread in the United States. With nearly one of two household possessing guns, controlling gun ownership have become an important issue (Kleck, 2013). It is important because two thirds of homicides in 2009 were committed with guns and 24 percent of robberies and 5 percent of assaults were committed by offenders armed with guns in 2008 (Mears 2010). Thus, regulation of firearms will effect crime rates directly or indirectly.
However, in many instances, guns are used by criminals, opponents of gun control policy argue that it is also used for self-defense against criminals. Research supports that using guns for self-defense is effectively reduces the possibility of injury and property loss (Kleck, 2013). Also, research shows that the victims are usually unable to deploy guns against intruders (Cook et.al, 2011). Therefore, owning a gun for self-defense might make people feel safer but the possibility of using it against criminals is very low, considering that the people who owns a gun for self-defense have no experience with guns.
As a result of the Supreme Court’s Heller and McDonald decisions, government can not ban home handgun possession for self-defense but they can put restrictive measures to control gun ownership and carrying concealed weapons.
B. Drug Courts Policy
Drug courts began to emerge late 1980s and the number of drug courts increase...

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...sex offender policy because ethical considerations limit whether to use experiments as a tool to assess impact of a policy.
The final step in the evaluation hierarchy is cost-efficiency evaluation. We can use cost-benefit analyses to quantify the policy cost and benefits as dollars(e.g., x amount of dollars spent and x amount of dollar saved). For example, if we decide that it is useful to focus on more serious sex offenders would save some money from cost of unnecessary workforce that would have spent. We can use cost-effectiveness analyses to calculate the cost per outcome (e.g., for x amount of dollar one sex offender deterred). It is useful when comparing different policies aiming same outcomes. It may be useful to compare the amount of money we spent on less serious sex offenders by incarcerating them and the amount of money we would spend on treatment services.