Criminal Justice Management, 2nd ed.

Theory and Practice in Justice-Centered Organizations

Mary Stohr, Peter A Collins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136261343
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Criminal justice students and practitioners in criminal justice agencies know first-hand the value of effective management; they understand the vital need to develop organizations that meet the expectations of their community members, as well as those of their workers. Employing an innovative, student-friendly approach, this fully-updated second edition of Criminal Justice Management: Theory and Practice in Justice-Centered Organizations examines the complex subjects associated with operating justice-centered agencies.

Authors Mary K. Stohr and Peter A. Collins interweave their comprehensive research with humor and personal anecdotes to make the study of criminal justice management accessible – and interesting – to students. Chapter exercises and study questions provide a springboard for lively class discussion, encouraging students to discover relevant applications for these provocative topics. Through its dedicated pedagogy, this text challenges readers to:

• initiate human relations management practices,

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• develop and maintain strong ethical practices,

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• provide support for the professional development of staff,

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• use proactive, collaborative and shared responsibility forms of leadership,

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• implement evidence-based best practices in agency programming,

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• build strong bridges within an engaged and informed community.

With an emphasis on putting theory into practice, Criminal Justice Management is an invaluable resource for the development of efficient, dynamic, and resourceful justice-centered agencies. It is perfect reading for criminal justice students, particularly those looking to enter a career in the criminal justice sector.

1 Criminal justice management

The big, the bad, and the beautiful

Introduction: scope and purpose of the book

The general public may not always view criminal justice agencies in a positive light, though they may admire people who labor in them. Problems with abuse of force by the police or in corrections, overcrowded courts and corrections services, lapsed supervision of clients by probation or parole officers, violence, and instances of mismanagement have been highlighted in the press and become a focus for public policy. In such instances the adjectives “big” and “bad” tend to fit criminal justice agencies, institutions, and their related management practices. But as people who work in the justice system, and those who study those organizations at any length, know, these institutions serve a vital purpose in this democracy. Namely, they not only prevent crime, respond to victims and citizens, and operate the machinery of justice; they also hold, supervise, feed, clothe, train, and rehabilitate thousands of inmates and clients daily.

The public is much safer because of the efforts of criminal justice staff who investigate crime, adjudicate cases, keep dangerous and repeat offenders incarcerated or supervised, and extract from the system innocent people inadvertently trapped there. And justice is served for both victims and offenders when the accused are given their day (or half-hour) in court, and when appropriate sentences are carried out in correctional institutions, in juvenile facilities, or in the community. Although some would argue that citizens/victims/offenders are physically or mentally harmed by their experience with the justice system, others—even those who are eventually incarcerated—if they are placed in well-managed institutions or programs, may actually benefit from this exposure. In the latter situation, one might even call that kind of criminal justice management “beautiful.”

Therefore, a central theme of this book is that there are a number of paths that lead to the effective management of criminal justice organizations, and it makes all the difference which route is taken. The phrase “best practices” is often bandied about these days to describe how a correctional treatment program, a police rape investigation, or any number of other activities might be organized and implemented. We argue in this book that there are indeed “best practices,” or better ways of doing things, in criminal justice management. These “better ways” are more likely to yield desirable outcomes, such as safety and security for the public, the staff, and the clientele of agencies, a skilled and involved staff, and, on balance, an enriching experience for all.

When there are problems in criminal justice, they can often be laid at the door of either public policymakers who ask too much and supply too little in the way of resources to agencies; or, in many cases, problems are the direct result of mismanagement by administrators of these agencies. Although public policy will be highlighted in a few places in this book, our primary focus is on the dynamics of organizations and how their management can be big or bad or beautiful. After a century of scholarly focus on the management of public and private sector institutions, the knowledge about how best to operate criminal justice agencies already exists and is practiced, in part or in whole, by the most successful managers. This book serves, then, to provide a theoretical, historical, and organizational context for such management practices.

To that end, this book covers a number of topics of interest to practitioners and students of criminal justice management, including organizational and environmental characteristics of criminal justice agencies (Chapter 1); distinctions between, and definitions of, common criminal justice, management, and organizational terms (Chapter 2); a discussion of the value of public vs. private service (Chapter 2); an examination of ethical issues, including official deviance, corruption, the use of excessive force, and sexual and gender harassment (Chapter 3); common management theories and their application (Chapter 4); interpersonal, organizational, and interorganizational communication and barriers (Chapter 5); the nature of the criminal justice role, socialization, and power issues (Chapter 6); leadership theories and styles (Chapter 7); personnel practices such as selection, performance appraisal, retention strategies, job enrichment, training, and related issues (Chapter 8); selection issues such as Workforce 2000, diversity and affirmative action (Chapter 9); managing and evaluating programming, accreditation, and standards (Chapter 10); and strategic planning and budgeting (Chapter 11).

Following these chapters and topics, we include a chapter devoted to the decision-making challenges faced by those who work in criminal justice agencies (Chapter 12). The final chapter encapsulates the best of management and organizational practices from the scholarly and practitioner literature in the form of an inclusive and consilient proposal of model management practices for criminal justice agencies (Chapter 13).

Chapters 3 and 6 include research instruments used to “take the temperature” of the work environment. Some chapters showcase a perspective or two on the given topic by a criminal justice practitioner, scholar, or student. Some chapters include classroom or training exercises that reinforce knowledge highlighted in the text, as well as key terms and reference tools such as web links for further investigation. Most chapters also include exercises that can be used in class to reinforce concepts and ideas. At the end of every chapter there are discussion questions to spur creative and analytical thought regarding chapter content.

One other note before we get to the “meat” of the book. The tone of the text, as reflected in our writing, is deliberately conversational at times. Research and scholarly works are highlighted in this book, but so are the experiences of people who work in, and study, criminal justice. We want to bring together the two worlds of practitioners and academe, and the best way we have found to do this while teaching is to present material in the second category in a less formal fashion.

The remainder of this chapter is devoted to setting the stage for the discussion of the management and organizational topics featured in this book. Although most students will have become acquainted with some or all of the major sectors of criminal justice (i.e., police, courts, corrections) before taking this class, the characteristics of the organizations, their staff, and their clientele bears repeating here to ensure a common understanding of them before we proceed. For example, it is important to recall that all criminal justice agencies are creatures of their environment to some extent, and that characteristic affects practice, policies, and funding. Therefore, to provide a common context from which to view the rest of the topics covered in this book, we begin with what for most students is probably a review of organizational, staff, and clientele characteristics.

Some defining issues in criminal justice: law enforcement, courts, and corrections

Police and sheriff’s departments

Despite the emphasis on various federal law enforcement agencies in the media, one of the most distinguishing features of public policing is that it is local. For this reason, most of the discussions of policing in this text focus on local city and state police and sheriff’s departments, with some discussion of policing agencies at the state and federal levels mixed in. Virtually every city of any size has either a local police department or contracts for such services from the county sheriff’s office. Often small villages and towns also have their own police department. In fact, the sheer variety of policing and the focus of policing are enormous and complex (Langworthy and Travis 1994). The local departments, whether police or sheriff, are the most numerous law enforcement organizations and employ the most public officers.

As of 2008 there were at least 870,000 city, county, state, and federal police and sheriff’s sworn officers in this country (Reaves 2011: 1). Of these, 461,000 were employed by local police departments and another 183,000 worked as sheriff’s deputies; that is, 74 percent of all sworn officers work for local departments.

Duties, mission, and roles of law enforcement

The duties of officers and the mission of such departments are diverse, as they are somewhat connected to the type of community being policed (Roberg et al. 2011). Traditionally, that mission has been divided between order maintenance, law enforcement or crime fighting, and service delivery. Additional roles for law enforcement agencies and officers might include information gathering and acting as a protector of individual rights. “To serve and protect,” the slogan of many departments, captures these duties and the overall mission of the departments, and also encompasses many separate tasks that we see officers do every day, such as investigating a crime, assisting a motorist, responding to a report of a prowler, checking the locks on a business, setting up roadside stops for drunk drivers, problem-solving with a local neighborhood group concerned about crimes in the area, and working in the local high school as a resource officer. Long ago, police scholars collapsed such tasks into service delivery, law enforcement, and order maintenance (e.g., see Goldstein 1977; Wilson 1968).

The patrol divisions perform virtually the same role—as that represents their mission—in both police and sheriff’s departments. City or municipal police departments and sheriff’s departments all perform basic tasks that include law enforcement, service, and order maintenance. The law enforcement tasks are the ones that come to mind when people think of the police. They include crime control activities that revolve around preventing, detecting, and investigating crime. The police or sheriff’s officer in this capacity may apprehend the suspect, make an arrest, or issue a citation.

Though we think of the police as primarily engaged in law enforcement activities, for the most part they are not. In fact, the majority of their time is spent in either service delivery (e.g., unlocking car doors, assisting accident victims, locating lost children, helping the injured) or order maintenance (e.g., crowd control, directing traffic, settling disputes between neighbors, keeping an eye on vagrant youth; Travis and Langworthy 2007). The police are called to act in these capacities because they are particularly suited for them, in that they are community-wide service workers who respond to calls from citizens and have specialized training. Moreover, both service and order maintenance tasks are closely connected to law enforcement in that they may involve interpretation of, or disputes about, the law, and they could be associated with crime in some way. For instance, although in most instances the report of a lost child does not signify that an abduction, hence a violation of the law, has occurred, in some cases it does. Or, although disputes between neighbors are usually resolved amicably, the police presence may serve to calm tempers that otherwise would escalate to the point that one or more parties committed an assault or destroyed property.

We discuss the police/sheriff officer’s role more in subsequent chapters, but it is instructive to note that law enforcement organizations, like the other criminal justice agencies mentioned here, determine what they do based on the demands from their environment, the type of department, and the law. As Roberg et al. (2011) indicate, these demands by the environment shape how the police make decisions about what they do. For example, the community environment determines whether the department is primarily engaged in service, order maintenance, or law enforcement activities (Kelling 1999). As communities become more diverse culturally, figuring out what the community wants can be daunting for the police.

Second, officers police based on perceptions of the formal and informal expectations of their department. If a supervisor wants them to concentrate on order maintenance duties at the expense of service, that is what they will do as long as the informal subculture does not discourage such prioritization (more about the formal and informal subcultures in organizations later). Therefore, the formal policies of a department and the informal culture of the department can both have an impact on how the police operate.

Finally, the law itself will shape what the police spend time on. As laws vary from state to state, and even between counties and cities in the same state, the police role will be shaped to some extent by those differences. The increasing incursion of federal law into local policing, particularly via the modern drug war, has had an impact on local policing to the extent that officers in local police and sheriff’s departments are assigned to drug task forces that are often run or facilitated by federal law enforcement. While engaged in these task forces, typically in law enforcement duties involving the drug war, police and sheriff’s officers may have less time to engage in service and order maintenance duties.

These diverse and sometimes competing expectations for police role activity can be “integrated” to some degree when they overlap. That is, for mala in se crimes (or those that are evil in and of themselves) such as murder, rape, assault, and robbery, there would be similar expectations for police behavior from the community environment, the organization, and the law. It is when the crime or disorder is less serious (mala prohibita crimes, or those that are defined as “evil” because they are disapproved of by society), or the service request is minor, that officers may exercise their discretion to ignore or only respond half-heartedly.

Organizational structure

Typically, police and sheriff’s departments, much like jails and prisons and probation and parole departments, are structurally bureaucratic, with paramilitary regimentation, regalia, and accoutrements (more about these later), and top-down communication. They do differ in that in most cases, if a county jail exists, it is operated by the sheriff’s department. Though some police departments may run a short-term holding facility, they usually do not operate a full-scale jail. State and federal law enforcement agencies do not operate correctional facilities.

Clientele

On the other hand, the clientele are generally the same for both police and sheriff’s departments (and often state and federal agencies), as they are residents of the community in which the organization is located or over which it has jurisdiction. The location and type of crime or incident that compels the resident’s contact with law enforcement will determine whether that contact is with a city, county, state, or federal agency. However, the clientele for those who have the most negative contact with agencies of criminal justice tends to differ in most cases from the general citizenry in several important respects. Those who have most negative...