Justice Administration: An Introduction

 Better understanding of how the components work as a system.  You may become an administrator, or are already one at the current time.

 Peak (2012) “Administration encompasses, or consists of, both management and supervision; it is the process by which a group of people are organized and directed toward achieving the group’s objectives” (p. 4).  Administration focuses on the overall organization, its mission, and its relationship with other organizations and groups.

 From outside in it may appear the components work in a very precise and efficient manner.  The components are often characterized by friction, conflict, and inadequate communications.  Why? Goals are not the same.

 “A process, which involves the decisions and actions taken by an institution, offender, victim, or society that influence the offender’s movement into, through, or out of the justice system” (Peak, 2012, p. 6).  The failure to deal with crime effectively may be attributed to organizational and administrative fragmentation of the justice process.

 In the network model the various components interact with each other and with others on the outside the system, such as the public and legislatures.  Key assumptions: shared goals, shared set of procedures and rules, everyone gets due process, and all get a fair and impartial trial.

 A criminal justice non-system: three segments of the justice system do not always function in harmony and that “the system is neither efficient enough to create a credible fear of punishment nor fair enough to command respect for its values” (Peak, 2012, p. 8).  Newsweek described this system as a non –system also and claim that they viewed it as a non-system in which the police do not catch the criminal, the courts do not try them, and the prisoners do not reform.

 Each of the CJ components has problems establishing what the goals should be of the system, as each of them has various ways of looking at the offender.  This can create goal conflict, which in turn causes the circumvention of policies, rules, and regulations that are in place.

 A true system: Willa Dawson stated, “Administration of justice can be regarded as a system by most standards. It may be a poorly functioning system but it does meet the criteria as a system by most standards.”  J.W. La Patra also commented that “I do believe that a criminal justice system does exist, but that it functions very poorly. The CJS is a loosely connected, non-harmonious, group of social entities” (. 10)

 Locke stated that while most people were good, there are those in society who may not be, and that those who were not would most likely prey on their fellow man.  People would have to join together and form governments, who in turn would be responsible for dealing with the evildoers of society instead of leaving it to the individual to decide or deal with.

 Thomas Hobbes, who argued that all people were essentially irrational and selfish, barely having enough rationality to realize that they needed to formulate governments for self protection.  People had just enough rationality to recognize their situation and to come together to form governments for self protection, agreeing that they should submit their safety to some man or assembly of men, to be protected by him against all others.

 Rousseau stated that “all men are born free, but everywhere he is in chains” (Peak, 2012, p. 12). Rousseau believed that the loss of freedom and conflict arose from the unequal distribution of resources in society (the haves versus the have not’s), and described the conflict between the ruling group and other groups in society.

 The primary difference between the consensus and conflict models are their evaluation of the legitimacy of the actions of the ruling groups in society. Locke felt that conflict could be repressed by force and other means, while Rousseau stated that the ruling groups were irrational and selfish, and created conflicts among the various groups in society.  The consensus model assumes that all parts of the system work towards a common goal (a systems approach) while the conflict model holds that agency interests tend to make actors within the system self serving (Peak, 2014).

 Peak (2012) states that the two goals of the system are:  The need to enforce the law and maintain social order;  The need to protect people from injustice.

 The first one is often referred to as the crime control model, which values the arrest and conviction of criminal offenders, and the second, because of its emphasis is on individual rights, is known as the due process model. The crime control model assumes that the repression of criminal conduct is the most important function to be performed by the criminal process.  The due process model assumes that the police are not always correct in their fact finding and the assumption is that it is better to let a guilty party go than to be over zealous in prosecution of an individual who turns out to be innocent.

 Because work is a vital part of our lives and carriage tremendous meanings in terms of our personal identity in happiness, the right match of a person to a job has long been recognized as a determinant of job satisfaction.  I think that we can all agree that work satisfaction is very important to the average worker today.  What is important to realize here is that in order to be successful the administrator should attempt to understand the personalities, needs, and motivations of their employees and should attempt meet those needs if at all possible.

 Identifying driving forces, or those supporting change and restraining forces, or those resisting change.  Analyzing the forces identified in step one.  Identifying alternative strategies for changing each force identified in step one in order to focus on reducing forces of resistance.