Administration of Criminal Justice: Structure, Function, and Process examines all, aspects of the criminal justice system from an organizational perspective. It is important to portray all criminal justice agencies and organizations within a general open-systems context, in which community, state, and national inputs can be indicated and their impact on individual agencies assessed. A fundamental assumption of this book is that criminal justice organizations can be understood best by placing them within the existing constraints of the larger environment of external organizations and public interests. Thus, individual behaviors and group conduct can be seen as greatly influenced by forces external to organizations as well as by internal organizational phenomena.
An overview of the book's contents follows. Chapter 1 describes what is meant by the administration of justice or justice administration. The units of analysis (individuals, groups, and organizations) commonly used to investigate justice administration topics are presented. Chapter 2 describes organizational theory and open-system and closed-system organizational models. These include the rational bureaucratic model and the goals and systems models. Chapter 3 describes several nonrational models, including human relations and organizations as natural systems. The relationship between theories and models of organizations is explained and illustrated by contemporary examples. Several popular organizational typologies are presented to provide students with a grasp of how different kinds of criminal justice organizations can be arranged. These arrangements include different sets of defining criteria showing how typologies meaningfully relate to what occurs in different organizational contexts.
Chapter 4 identifies and describes several important organizational variables used for research purposes. Organizational variables are divided according to structure, control, change, and behavior. Organizational structural variables include organizational size, complexity or differentiation, and formalization. Organizational control variables include the size of the administrative component, bureaucratization, centralization, and levels of authority and span of control. Organizational change includes labor turnover, organizational conflict, flexibility, growth, and succession. Organizational behavioral variables include organizational climate, goals, and effectiveness.
Chapter 5 describes several important interpersonal variables, including work group cohesiveness and supervisor-subordinate relations. Individual variables are also presented and include descriptions of employee attitudes about their work, job characteristics, and methods of evaluating work roles and worker effectiveness. The interrelatedness of these variables is explained. Assessing organizational effectiveness involves paying attention to these different variables in a variety of institutional and organizational contexts. Students can obtain a clearer picture of how different actors in the criminal justice system are affected by different organizational dimensions and even by factors external to their own organizations.
Chapter 6 examines leadership in organizations. Traditional power typologies are presented, including examples from the works of Max Weber, French and Raven, and Amitai Etzioni. Legitimate authority types, the bases of social power, and the compliance-involvement typology are discussed to highlight different motivational methods used by supervisors and administrators to induce employees to act in given ways. A careful examination of employee involvement is offered to show that different means of inducing compliance also induce different types of involvement. Depending on the nature of employee involvement, worker performance and attitudes will be affected either positively or negatively.
Chapter 7 examines several different types of communication systems in organizations, including a discussion of formal and informal communication networks. Communication patterns are closely linked with hierarchies of authority, end several parallels between these concepts are drawn. Both the functions and dysfunctions of formal and informal communication networks are described and discussed.
Chapter 8 examines the factors that impact the motivation, satisfaction, and morale of organizational personnel. How are work satisfaction and motivation related to organizational effectiveness and work output? Several important dimensions of worker satisfaction are explored, including various styles of leadership and supervision, work group cohesion, workload and pressure, the prestige and status of the job, type of reward structure, and participation in decision making. The complexity of explaining worker motivation is described.
Chapter 9 is a description of police and sheriffs' departments. The chapter begins with an overview of the history of law enforcement. The goals and functions of police and sheriffs' departments are presented, together with their liaison with federal agencies. The divisions of labor of these different types of organizations are described, and a full description of the recruitment and selection processes is given for each. The chapter examines several important law enforcement issues, including controlling law enforcement officer performance through better training and selection methods. Professionalization and police-community relations are examined as issues confronting different police agencies. Different forms of officer misconduct are described, as well as the methods used by police departments and public entities to deter or minimize misconduct. Included is a discussion of civilian complaint review boards and their various functions.
Chapter 10 describes the organization and operation of federal, state, and local court systems. The important role of judges is addressed, including how judicial nominees are selected. The roles and responsibilities of prosecutors at all jurisdictional levels are described, along with the methods for selecting prosecutors as well as a consideration of their ethical responsibilities and codes of professional conduct. Prosecutors' case processing and prioritizing functions are examined, and the work of other court employees also is considered. The relationship between prosecutors and the court is described, including the diverse functions associated with these important criminal justice roles. Prosecutorial and judicial misconduct are also examined, including various methods used to detect and sanction such misconduct.
Chapter 11 describes and differentiates jails and prisons and provides a brief history of each. These descriptions also include an examination and profile of both jail and prison inmates. The administration of jail and prison systems is considered, and methods of selecting and recruiting jail personnel and prison correctional staff and administrators are discussed. Selected jail and prison issues are described, including overcrowding, inmate rights, privatization, and the legal liabilities of jail officers and correctional officers.
Chapter 12 describes community corrections, including an examination of probation and parole services and their organization and administration. Other community services are described, including work/study release and furlough programs, home confinement programs, electronic monitoring supervisory methods, and halfway houses. The legal liabilities of different actors who work in or administer community corrections programs are examined, and the use of volunteers and paraprofessionals in community-based programs is considered. The changing nature of community corrections also is described.
Chapter 13 presents an overview of juvenile justice organizations, beginning with a history of juvenile courts. Different types of juvenile offenders are delineated, including delinquents, status offenders, and children in need of supervision. Juvenile court procedures are presented, including a discussion of types of dispositions available. Various types of corrections for juvenile offenders are de-' scribed, including industrial schools. The blended sentencing statutes that are increasingly important and popular for dealing with more violent juvenile offenders are explained. Several important issues relative to juveniles are examined, including overcrowding, deinstitutionalization of status offenders, escalating violence and the accompanying sanctions imposed by juvenile courts, due process and the get-tough movement, and the legal rights of juveniles. Various community agencies that cater to different youthful offenders also are described.
Chapter 14 concludes the text with an examination of how organizational effectiveness is measured. How do we know that our organizations and policies are effective? Are the goals established by different organizations realized or achieved? Various methods of evaluating organizational performance are presented. Such descriptions are provided successively for law enforcement, prosecution and the courts, and corrections. Evaluation research and public policy are interconnected, and the nature of this relationship is described. The ideal-real dilemma frustrates the efforts of more than a few actors in the criminal justice system, as policy decision making often is at odds with public interests or the vested interests of political subgroups. Organizational effectiveness is examined in retrospect.
Throughout this book, boxes highlight key terms and concepts. These boxes are mostly adaptations of stories that have been featured in international and national news services bulletins, such as those of the Associated Press. They feature current events and vignettes that illustrate different criminal justice agencies in action or underscore particular issues or incidents. Another type of box presents various actors in law enforcement, the courts, and corrections who provide biographical sketches that examine why they became involved in their particular careers and provide advice to students seeking careers in particular fields of criminal justice.
Another feature of the text is the inclusion of case studies that accompany each chapter. These case studies have been drawn from actual events that have occurred in different jurisdictions throughout the United States. Fictitious names and places are used, however, in order to protect innocent parties and to preserve the integrity of others who have acted responsibly in those jurisdictions. The purpose of these case studies is to elicit discussion and argument about why the situation occurred and what strategies might be used to resolve the problems described. The case method is particularly useful for learning how to apply various concepts covered in each chapter. Therefore, an attempt should be made to apply chapter concepts and examples as a part of one's analysis of the case facts. It should be noted that there are no perfect solutions to any particular case. Every scenario may be approached from different perspectives, and more than one solution may be feasible. Class discussion or written responses to questions following these cases should generate a variety of solutions. It is important to provide a rationale for any solution proposed. That is simply saying, "If I were so-and-so, I would do this or that," is insufficient. Students are encouraged to back up their recommendations with their own rationales for the solutions they propose.
Finally, this book is the result of the collective efforts of many
