A researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) is a practical, collaborative, and long-term mutually beneficial relationship between an agency or program and a research or evaluation partner. The purpose of a RPP is to conduct strategic problem solving to develop, implement into practice, and assess the use, impact, and cost of practices, programs, treatment, and policies.

Practitioners are immersed in programs or agencies to work with people who are impacted by social problems they seek to address. They can be considered specialists in a variety of criminal justice issues. Practitioners in the criminal justice system have specific responsibilities and function within subsystems (federal, state, and local jurisdictions) across various agencies (e.g., law enforcement, courts, and corrections) with differing and interrelated roles. They are specialists in the administration of services and can provide detailed and nuanced explanations of their work, from information about their agency or organization’s administrative records and operational systems to what can and cannot be examined given information they collect, political and institutional pressures, and staff bandwidth.

A research partner, who may be affiliated with academia or a research institute or be unaffiliated, has the training and skill set to conduct rigorous evaluations and primary or secondary data collection and analysis and the research skill set to be able to answer complex questions that practitioners lack the time, knowledge, or resources to investigate on their own. Researchers offer an outside perspective for practitioners as they seek to understand and address social problems and can provide practitioners with guidance on how to leverage data to tell stories about their programs and services, which strengthens the overall sustainability of their practices.