Surviving the loss of federal dollars and mandate: The case of state planning agencies

Abstract

This article uses recently collected data to describe the current status of criminal justice state planning agencies. It was found that many SPAs have survived the loss of federal funds and have undergone several changes while doing so. The data point to several factors potentially associated with survival. Among them are the SPA's ability to redirect efforts from federal to state priorities and to establish exchange and power-dependence interorganizational linkages. Linkage formation seems affected by the quality of SPA leadership and its access to the governor, by SPA placement in the state bureaucracy, and by the number and nature of SPA task responsibilities—policy-influencing tasks being more critical to survival than ministerial or clerical tasks. The findings have implications for future federal efforts to institute change-oriented agencies in state criminal justice systems and, potentially, implications more generally for agencies threatened with the loss of substantial federal dollars.