A 2007 Tennessee law defined evidence and required that 100% of the state’s juvenile justice funding be evidence-based beginning in 2012, with the exception of pilot programs that are building the evidence basis for research or theory-based interventions. As a result, the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services’ 2017 Request for Proposal for juvenile justice services, which provided funding through 2020, noted that “the Department of Children’s Services is prohibited from expending state funds on any juvenile justice program…unless the program is evidence-based.”
