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Criminal Justice System: Agencies and Management

Introduction

Any civilized society has a rudimentary role of ensuring that innocent people are protected from criminal victimization, this responsibility rests primarily with the judicial service system. Criminal justice refers to a collection of agencies (at both federal, state, and local levels) who are involved in delivering justice to crime perpetrators. As revealed in Stojkovic, Kalinich, & Klofas (2014), the primary goals and objectives of the system are to detect and prevent crime, prosecute those accused of committing crime, convict and sentence the culprits, imprison and rehabilitate the offenders, and offering support to victims. Meeting these objectives and goals evidently calls for a multi-agency involvement in the criminal justice system.

Agencies with the Criminal Justice System

As a manager of a county-wide courthouse, the other agencies that my organization would interact with as part of our everyday operations in the delivery of justice are the law enforcement agencies and corrections agencies (Feinblatt & Berman, 2001). The law enforcement agency comprises the police and other officers involved in the apprehension of suspected offenders, investigation of the offense, and collection and protection of evidence among other responsibilities. The corrections agency, on the other hand, works to enforce sanctions on the convicts through parole, probation, prison, jail, house arrest, and electronic monitoring. Here, the main purpose is to rehabilitate and punish the offenders, and more importantly, to ensure public safety. Lastly, I will also work with the judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers as the main actors in the courthouse (Knight & Wilson, 2016).

Organization Outside the Criminal Justice Systems that the Courthouse must Interact with

Apart from the aforementioned interdependent agencies within the criminal justice system, there are external organizations that the courthouse must interact with for effective operation. Some of the allied organizations that will significantly impact criminal justice’s response to offenses include medical institutions, mental health service providers, and child protection agencies (Stojkovic, Kalinich, & Klofas, 2014). Doctors and the rest of the hospital personnel are usually the first parties to come into contact with victims of crime, especially crimes the result in injury. As such, they not only provide tremendous assistance to the victims but also provide vital information during a crime investigation. Regarding mental health professionals, they are key in providing mental assessment reports of the offenders prior to conviction. They also provide testimony at trial concerning the potential impacts of the offense on the victims, which plays a vital role in the conviction process.

Impact of Management

Management in one agency of the judicial system can affect performance in other agencies for various reasons. First, the agencies are interdependent, and thus poor management of one agency, for example, law enforcement or police agency, will contribute negatively to outcomes in other agencies; namely, the court and the correctional systems. A case in point is a failed management in a police department; it will breed a chain of challenges in the whole criminal justice system, ranging from inconclusive evidence to convict offenders to the wrongful conviction of suspects due to false evidence (Parent & Snyder, 2002). As a result, prisons and other correctional facilities will be filled with innocent people who do not need rehabilitation, whereas the real criminals, who should be separated from the community, punished, and rehabilitated, are left roaming the streets, and such a situation perpetrate crime.   

How Leaders can Address the Issue of Competition and Lack of Cooperation

Competition and lack of cooperation are rampant in the criminal justice system due to interorganizational conflict, which Stojkovic, Kalinich, and Klofas (2014) define as a type of conflict that arises when “different organizations share a common purpose but disagree about how that purpose will be achieved” (p. 319). For instance, an agency such as the jail is likely to perceive that its objectives and goals conflict with those of the law enforcement, court, and other agencies. Such conflicts are the key sources of competition and lack of cooperation among agencies in the criminal justice system, and thus addressing them will contribute to positive outcomes in their operations. Making reference to Thomas (1985), Stojkovic, Kalinich, and Klofas (2014) advise that conflict situations, and hence competition and inadequate cooperation among organizations in the criminal justice system can be dealt with in two primary ways: process interventions and structural interventions.

Process interventions attempt to address conflict situations by manipulating the internal experiences of the parties in conflict. The approach, therefore, addresses the issue of competition and lack of cooperation by altering such conditions as informal rules, personal attributes, conflict of interest, organizational agency, constituent pressure, and power and status. Other approaches include confrontation, interaction management, and truce. In comparison, structural interventions involve reducing competition and lack of cooperation by examining and manipulating preexisting conditions of the agencies that promote the issues and other forms of conflict. The interventions include appropriate selection and training to find the right people for the job and contextual-modification interventions to change the setting within the agencies operate (Stojkovic, Kalinich & Klofas, 2014)