Criminal Justice Organizations: Administration and Management

1. Criminal Justice Organizations: Administration and Management Chapter One – Basic Concepts for Understanding Criminal Justice Organizations

2. Learning Objectives • 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.

3. What is an Organization? • Organizations are defined in terms of their: • Structure, • Purpose, and • Activity. • Weber (1947) distinguished corporate groups from other social organizations by; • Extent to which they limit admission to the group, and • Whether they include leaders and staffs.

4. What is an Organization? • Barnard (1938) • “a system of consciously coordinated activities of forces of two or more persons”. • This definition • Allows for a variety of structures. • Does not limit purpose. • Is unclear whether activities are ‘organizational’ or merely collective behavior.

5. What is an Organization? • Organizations • Develop cultures, • Are political, • Serve, and sometimes fail to serve, their member’s personal needs, • Actively seek survival, • Compete for resources, • Are internally complex, and • Exist in a complex environment

6. What is Management? • Carlisle (1976) • 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.

7. What is Leadership? • Klotter (1990) • “refers to a process that helps direct and mobilize people and their ideas…” • Dupree (1989) • Leadership is tribal in nature and focuses on an organization’s symbols, rituals and culture. • Leaders focus on • Motivating employees, • Developing organizational culture, and • Changing the organization.

8. Management vs. Leadership Managers Leaders 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 • 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

9. Management and Leadership in the Public Sector • Criminal justice administrators are constrained by • Civil service protections, and • 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.

10. Open-Systems Theory • Initially the focus was on the efficiency of internal processes (Taylor 1919, 1947). • This is a closed-system perspective wherein organizations are viewed as • Self contained, and • 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.

11. Open-Systems Theory • 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 • Community policing • The interaction between the police and prosecutors • Legislative changes in criminal statutes and sentencing

12. Complex Goals • Criminal justice organizations have both multiple and conflicting goals. • Simon (1964) first recognized this organizational complexity. • The pursuit of all goals impinges on the degree of goal attainment. • Not possible for all goals to be achieved equally.

13. Complex Goals • Complexity caused by goal conflict can result in inefficiencies. • Conversely, goal conflict may actually be necessary. • Due process constraints placed on the police by the courts insures civil liberty • Plea bargaining by prosecutors reserves important resources for more serious cases.

14. Complex Environment • Organizations exist within environments that are made complex by competing interests and goals. • Police departments are particularly vulnerable to complex environments. • Crime control versus Due process conflict • 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.

15. Complex Environment • The environment also determines how pubic organizations are evaluated. • Clients may not be legitimizers. • Prisoners (clients) are not viewed as legitimate evaluators of the organization. • Mission, not the marketplace, determines value. • Law enforcement may be considered more important than corrections.

16. Complex Internal Constitutencies • 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. • Employee associations and unions • Inmates in prisons and jails • Staff employees

17. Chapter Summary • 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.

18. Chapter Summary • 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.

19. Thinking Point and Question • 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?