Criminal Justice Organizations: Administration and Management
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Transcript Criminal Justice Organizations: Administration and Management
Chapter One – Basic Concepts
for Understanding Criminal
Justice Organizations
Understand the definition of an organization.
Comprehend the concept of management.
Know the concept of leadership.
Comprehend the public context to both management and
leadership.
Define and comprehend open-systems theory.
Explain the importance of complex goals to criminal justice
administration.
Know the complex environment of criminal justice
administration.
Understand complex internal constituencies and criminal justice
administration.
Organizations are defined in terms of
their:
o Structure,
o Purpose, and
o Activity.
Weber (1947) distinguished corporate groups
from other social organizations by;
o Extent to which they limit admission to the group,
and
o Whether they include leaders and staffs.
Barnard (1938)
o “a system of consciously coordinated activities
of forces of two or more persons”.
This definition
o Allows for a variety of structures.
o Does not limit purpose.
o Is unclear whether activities are ‘organizational’
or merely collective behavior.
Organizations
o Develop cultures,
o Are political,
o Serve, and sometimes fail to serve, their
member’s personal needs,
o Actively seek survival,
o Compete for resources,
o Are internally complex, and
o Exist in a complex environment
Carlisle (1976)
o The “process by which the elements of a group are
integrated, coordinated, and/or utilized so as to
effectively and efficiently achieve organizational
objectives”.
Ignores the notion of ‘office’ or ‘position’.
Management is not the sole province of managers
and supervisors.
Non-supervisory personnel can perform the
management function.
Klotter (1990)
o “refers to a process that helps direct and mobilize
people and their ideas…”
Dupree (1989)
o Leadership is tribal in nature and focuses on an
organization’s symbols, rituals and culture.
Leaders focus on
o Motivating employees,
o Developing organizational culture, and
o Changing the organization.
Managers
Leaders
Insure compliance with
existing processes
Focus on planning and
budgeting to achieve short
term goals
Seek to achieve rationality
by enforcing rules
Concerned about
employees doing things
right
Question existing
processes
Focus on more long term
strategic planning
Seek opportunities to
change the organization
and its culture
Concerned about
employees doing the right
thing
Criminal justice administrators are constrained by
o Civil service protections, and
o Obligations and expectations due to their public status
designation.
The legislative process produces inconsistencies
that further complicate the pubic manager’s role.
Public sector employee unions and associations
are often quite powerful and influential within the
organization.
Initially the focus was on the efficiency of internal
processes (Taylor 1919, 1947).
This is a closed-system perspective wherein
organizations are viewed as
o Self contained, and
o Unresponsive to their environments.
All elements in a closed-system are connected, but
only internally.
Communication follows the lines of hierarchy.
Power and authority are a function of office.
The closed-system model has been largely
discredited, especially for criminal justice
organizations.
Organizations that exist within open-systems
influence and are highly influenced by the
environments in which they exist.
Criminal justice examples
o Community policing
o The interaction between the police and prosecutors
o Legislative changes in criminal statutes and sentencing
Criminal justice organizations have
both multiple and conflicting goals.
Simon (1964) first recognized this
organizational complexity.
o The pursuit of all goals impinges on the
degree of goal attainment.
o Not possible for all goals to be achieved
equally.
Complexity caused by goal conflict can
result in inefficiencies.
Conversely, goal conflict may actually be
necessary.
o Due process constraints placed on the police by
the courts insures civil liberty
o Plea bargaining by prosecutors reserves
important resources for more serious cases.
Organizations exist within environments that are
made complex by competing interests and goals.
Police departments are particularly vulnerable to
complex environments.
o Crime control versus Due process conflict
o Lack of universal agreement among the public on what
the police department should do.
This results in police departments becoming more
bureaucratic and paramilitary in order to mitigate
outside influence.
The environment also determines how
pubic organizations are evaluated.
o Clients may not be legitimizers.
• Prisoners (clients) are not viewed as
legitimate evaluators of the organization.
o Mission, not the marketplace, determines
value.
• Law enforcement may be considered more
important than corrections.
Constituencies within the organization
influence the organization’s structure and
function.
In most situations these effects are in the
form of a struggle for power.
o Employee associations and unions
o Inmates in prisons and jails
o Staff employees
Organizations are structured along three dimensions:
structure, purpose and activity.
Organizations are managed through a process but
management functions are not limited to a specific office
within the organization.
Criminal justice organizations both affect and are affected
by the key elements of their environments.
Unlike closed system theory, which emphasizes key
operational components of an organization, open systems
theory hypothesizes that criminal justice organizations are
malleable and influenced differentially by elements of the
environment.
Criminal justice organizations have many goals and
compete with one another for limited resources.
Criminal justice agencies have varied and complex
environments that make criminal justice administration
more complex.
Criminal justice organizations are evaluated, in part, by the
perceptions of what various environments expect of them.
Criminal justice organizations are influenced by many
internal groups, such as line personnel, support staff and
others who perform the work.
Internal groups are powerful, but their power is being
challenged due to budgetary concerns.
An intelligence analyst with the Bigton Police
Department has uncovered convincing evidence of an
active juvenile gang within the city.
The intelligence suggests this gang is active in
numerous criminal enterprises.
Applying the information from this chapter, would this
juvenile gang fit the definition of an organization?
If not, why not?
If so, then how would you apply your knowledge of
organizations to suppressing this gang’s criminal
activities?