Criminal Justice Leadership Strategies and Practices
Criminal Justice
Criminal justice is a set of laws, rules, and bodies designed to charge criminals who commit illegal acts and allow them to rehabilitate their victims. The criminal justice system includes law enforcement agencies, prosecution of offenders and protection from these persecutions, punishment and rehabilitation of criminals, witness protection, and strategies to curb criminal activity (Cordner, 2019, p. 65). Organizations in the criminal justice system are governed by specific regulations and laws. However, they are allowed to develop their approach to illegal combat activity. Leadership strategy plays a crucial role in criminal justice organizations.
Organizational Culture
Corporate culture in criminal law denotes how people interact with each other in an organization. Engaging organizational culture is an essential aspect of criminal oversight, and the departments responsible for managing the political aspects use this concept extensively. To improve the quality of work, the structures involved in the criminal justice system should evolve a corporate culture, paying attention to leadership and communication aspects. This will improve their interaction and exchange of skills. As direct facilitators of training the aforementioned skills, police departments can be involved, which apply leadership and productive communication skills to their work on a daily basis.
Organizational Variables
Larger organizational variables, such as incentive systems, leadership, and training, can also impact an individual (Pollock, 2018, p. 263). These elements are crucial in promoting moral conduct or enabling immoral activity. Cultural and societal variables may also influence a public service organization’s degree of ethical behavior. Small work groups or the entire business might experience micro-level motivational impacts (Pollock, 2018, p. 267). Formal incentives often occur at the organizational level and include bonuses and quotas. Organizations need to reassess their compensation structures to increase employees’ capacity for moral decision-making. The culture becomes corrupt if unethical behavior is accidentally encouraged by putting all of the emphasis on metrics and quotas. For instance, the police leader must constantly monitor the level of organizational culture in the department to identify any forms of misconduct and address the difficulties that arise in interaction.
Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership focuses on a “people-centered approach” to empower, inspire, and motivate the team. Transformational leaders are inclusive and consider each person’s unique needs, motivation, and skills. They often have an “open door” policy to promote more frequent and frank communication.
Behavioral Theory
The image of a successful leader is a combination of different qualities and skills. According to Cordner (2019), among the traits inherent in this description, one might highlight the ability to support colleagues and subordinates, assign tasks effectively, allocate responsibilities adequately, and achieve goals intelligently. Leaders should understand the differences between job types and be aware that the role of a police officer is different from those in other areas. They must prioritize defending the rights to free expression, due process, and protection from arbitrary search and seizure guaranteed by the Constitution. However, leaders should clearly understand the necessity for diverse ways to ensure police accountability to the political system (Cordner, 2019, p. 165). Moreover, they have to be educated about how laws are made, how the criminal justice system works, and how the numerous other systems that the police use to operate.
Behavioral Leadership
Behavioral leadership theories mainly focus on the actions of the leader. Behavioral learning theory focuses not on quality but on action itself. When speaking about specific approaches to leadership, Cordner (2019) identifies several different types, for instance, those that are people-oriented, status-oriented, control-oriented, challenge-oriented, and others.
In the context of a behavioral approach, one can highlight several advantages of this practice, which is largely due to the flexibility of choice. This approach allows one to choose which of the paths is optimal to achieve those leadership tasks that are needed. Such a theory helps highlight the best methods for realizing leadership ambitions and contributes to drawing up an adequate plan to accomplish them. This enables leaders to be compliant and adapt depending on circumstances.
Behavioral Theory in Leadership
In police departments, paying attention to behavior should be a mandatory initiative because the responsibility that lies with employees concerns not only their work but also the well-being of others. For instance, having an opportunity to influence subordinates, the police leader should promote the principle of flexibility in interaction and encourage the difference of views in teams. Productivity is the aggregate of everyone’s productivity, not individual achievement, and the better communication between colleagues is established, the higher the likelihood of high performance (Cordner, 2019). Accordingly, the personality of each employee must be taken into account when defining job responsibilities and setting operational objectives.
Planning
This leadership task resembles the management tasks of system development, planning, organizing, and staffing, and it is a great illustration of how leadership and management intersect. For instance, the team captain will designate each player’s spot in the batting order and location on the field during a sandlot baseball game (Harr & Hess, 2009, p. 49). Similarly, the person in charge of a crime scene investigation will specify the types of evidence to seek, the search strategy to be employed, and the employees’ responsibilities. To provide the members of their groups with a clearer understanding of what to accomplish and how to do it, the leaders in both situations design the task structures. For instance, the manager responsible for planning must allocate responsibilities according to various criteria, such as the level of experience and preparedness of subordinates. Otherwise, the risks of errors and gaps in work arise, which is unacceptable in the area under consideration.
Strategic Planning
The application of strategic planning in the work of law enforcement agencies is a significant approach. This practice is valuable for public and private organizations as a tool to adequately assess the problems affecting them at the moment, as well as those that may arise in the future. Through strategic planning, police officers and their supervisors can enhance their decision-making process and optimize communication.
By following the practice of strategic planning, criminal justice entities can provide themselves with a comprehensive understanding of current tasks to implement and future initiatives to take. Planning helps the organization to adapt effectively to all environmental changes. In addition, strategic planning improves teamwork, the exchange of ideas, more effective decision-making, and faster problem-solving in the organization. This leads to increased productivity and efficiency. As an example of effective planning, Cheung and Yu (2020) cite the National Emergency Information Plan as an initiative to streamline the criminal justice system. Leaders should effectively lead their team to achieve its goals using strategic leadership techniques that will help maintain the smooth and efficient operation of the team over time.
Level Management System
Lower-level managers’ judgments about the definition of structures are constrained by the fundamental organizing, staffing, and system-building decisions made by upper-level managers. The upper-level supervisors, for instance, decide how many officers will be assigned to the patrol division, how they will be allocated across shifts and squads, what patrolling tactics and procedures will be used, and how the patrol zones will be delineated (Harr & Hess, 2009, p. 23). Even though lower-level patrol managers often assign individual officers to their patrol areas, they carry out their definition-of-structure job on a much lesser scale and with less power than upper-level managers.
Community Relations
Public Relations
In response to alleged issues in police-community relations, numerous police agencies set up community relations divisions in the 1950s and 1960s (Cordner, 2019, p. 254). These community relations departments initially focused on public relations by conveying the police perspective to the community. This one-sided strategy was quickly seen as ineffective and broadened to provide the public a platform for communicating with the police. The ideology of two-way police-community interactions strongly emphasized the value of communication and understanding between parties.
Police and community liaison personnel and units have not been able to successfully ensure good communication between the community and its police, which became apparent in the 1970s (Cordner, 2019). The key focus should not be on the individual public appearances of law enforcement officials but on the daily actions of the police, which society sees and assesses. There have been initiatives to educate patrol police on the traits and issues unique to their communities and how to interact with the community and prevent crime. Additionally, team policing initiatives were put into place in order to increase police responsiveness to community complaints.
Crime Prevention
Early police efforts at community engagement and public relations naturally shifted toward crime prevention, partly due to the public’s need for knowledge on protecting themselves and their families. Ironically, the public began to inquire about the best ways to combat crime due to police attempts to foster better relationships with the community. This history explains why the term “crime prevention” in the context of police strategy now more often refers to specialized initiatives intended to make it more difficult for people to become victims of crime in their homes, business places, and residences. As a matter of organizational structure, crime prevention units are frequently combined with community services and community relations units rather than being merged with patrol or investigations (Cordner, 2019, p. 121). Target hardening is one strategy for preventing unauthorized access to buildings and residences by enhancing their doors, windows, locks, alarms, lights, and landscaping. Another strategy is to teach people how to stay out of dangerous situations and respond appropriately when they are assaulted or threatened. Other strategies urge people to patrol their areas and to keep an eye out for their neighbors’ property. As an example, one might give the example of a leader who has lived in a particular area for a long time and knows its inhabitants well. In this case, the effectiveness of crime prevention increases because the leader is aware of the features of citizens’ life in a particular community and the potential forms of deviant behavior that may occur.
Police-Public Relations
This is the main requirement for practical police work. The police must establish strong ties with the population to ensure their safety and practical work. The relationship between the police and society reflects the willingness of the public to provide information about crime (Cordner, 2019, p. 462). If citizens rely on the police, they are more likely to work with the police to ensure law and order in society. Decent relations between the police and the public help the police understand humanity’s problems well. In addition, people are more likely to report criminal activities in their area to the police if they have a good connection with the police.
References
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Cheung, H. Y., & Yu, E. (2020). A review of the strategic planning process in the Hong Kong Police Force. Public Administration and Policy, 23(3), 245-258. Web.
Cordner, G. W. (2019). Police administration (10th ed.). Taylor & Francis.
DeLoach, J. (2019). Managing organizational culture as an enterprise asset. Corporate Compliance Insights. Web.
Harr, J. S., & Hess, K. M. (2009). Careers in criminal justice and related fields: From internship to promotion. Cengage Learning.
Pollock, J. M. (2018). Ethical dilemmas and decisions in criminal justice (10th ed.). Cengage Learning.
Your Query Staff. (2022). Behavioral leadership theory. UrQuery. Web.