Transcript Criminal Justice Organizations: Administration and Management

Chapter One – Basic Concepts
for Understanding Criminal
Justice Organizations
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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?