Introduction
In a contemporary society that is wrought by crime, drugs, violence, terrorism, and other types of social malaise, the criminal justice system serves as society’s shield to defend itself against the actions it defines as criminal. These activities reflect a broad range of social, legal, economic, political, and moral interests. Today in the United States, criminal justice functions as an interconnected system, run by professionals and constantly assessed, evaluated, and advanced by social scientists. To be successful and effective, the criminal justice system must be perceived as having authority by the community that it serves. The perception of authority and its legitimacy require confidence in the criminal justice system. The police, courts, and correctional agencies strive hard to gain the public’s confidence as they serve and protect their rights and welfare.
To achieve confidence in any organization, there must be strong leadership that would serve as the guiding light to achieve all its goals and missions. This is because an important aspect of leadership is helping a group choose the “right” decision method (Schermerhorn, Hunt & Osborn, 2003). In this case, we will try to delve into the current state of leadership in the criminal justice system and try to assess if it is satisfactory enough to promote the development of the organization. Sad to say, inappropriate, illegal, and unethical behavior occurs in all organizations–hospitals, social service agencies, corporations, and even universities. Criminal justice agencies can also commit these misdemeanors. Some members will eventually succumb to corruption, will use excessive force, will commit acts of brutality, will violate due process protections and human rights provisions of individuals, will exploit and harass clients and fellow workers, and engage in other unethical practices (Wright, 1999). In this regard, how does the leadership in the criminal justice system maintain the integrity of its subordinates? What are the challenges that criminal justice organizations face at present? Are the leading groups prepared for the worst scenarios given the modern threats of criminals in our present time?
Goals of the Criminal Justice System
Schermerhorn, Hunt, and Osborn (2003) emphasized that goals play an important part in high-performance work environments. In fact, they cited Locke et al. (1981) who prescribed that goal setting is the process of developing, negotiating, and formalizing the targets or objectives that a person is responsible for accomplishing. For the criminal justice system, it is easy to conclude that the organizations are dedicated to preventing crime. But critics will immediately counter with statistics proving that the system does a poor job of this and that it even fosters crime in a variety of ways: by criminalizing conduct in the first place, by raising the statistics, by labeling individuals as “criminals” (thus creating criminal careers), by making inmates unfit for life in a free society, and so on. Thus, we can say that the goal of the criminal justice system is doing more than delivering criminal justice. The end product must be fair and deserved, and at each stage of the process, justice must also be applied and delivered.
This is why, Herbert Packer, in his landmark book The Limits of the Criminal Sanction (1968), revealed important identifying methods by which criminal justice seeks to achieve its goals. He presents two approaches for the criminal justice process: the due process model and the crime control model. The due process model requires strict adherence to the Constitution. The focus is on the accused and on his or her rights. The focus is also on providing some balance to the power and authority of the state. Quite simply, due process protections under the Constitution force the state to fulfill its burden of proving its case against the accused. The crime control model focuses on the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. The criminal process exists to investigate crimes, screen suspects, detain dangerous defendants, and secure convictions of guilty parties. This should be done with speed and finality. Each agency at every stage of the process assumes the responsibility for dealing efficiently with the criminal case.
Packer (1968) described the due process model as an obstacle course. Each stage creates barriers to the successful prosecution of an accused, whereas the crime control model resembles an assembly line. Efficiency, productivity, and reliability are its hallmarks, with constitutional rights taking second place to the desirability of processing offenders quickly and successfully.
This identification of two different approaches explains many of the differences in policymakers’ views. The two models are the practical and theoretical extremes of how the process can be conducted. They neither explain the goals at the end of the criminal justice system nor pinpoint the operational ideal, which is to operate a criminal justice system under the rule of law.
Finally, Wayne R. LaFave and Jerold H. Israel (1991) identified eight goals for the ideal criminal justice system:
- Establishing an adversarial system of adjudication. Neutral decision-makers must make decisions in a forum where opponents can present interpretations of facts and law in a light most favorable to their case.
- Establishing an accusatorial system of prosecution. In such a system the state bears the burden of proving the guilt of the accused.
- Minimizing erroneous convictions. Protecting an accused from erroneous conviction is an important goal of the process.
- Minimizing the burdens of accusation and litigation. The process must reduce the likelihood that innocent people will be accused of crimes.
- Providing lay participation. The criminal justice process must not be left entirely to government officials. Lay participation can ensure objectivity and independence.
- Respecting the dignity of the individual. The criminal process must ensure respect for privacy and autonomy, as well as freedom from physical and emotional abuse.
- Maintaining the appearance of fairness. Ensuring fairness in the process is not enough. There must also be an appearance of justice and fairness to the participants and the public.
- Achieving equality in the application of the process. Ensuring the just treatment of an accused is not enough. The criminal justice process must also ensure that like cases are treated alike.
Current State of Leadership in the Criminal Justice System
Klofas et al. (2003) revealed that little empirical testing of the theoretical models of leadership in criminal justice organizations has been attempted. Moreover, what has been done, moreover, is still rooted in the 1950s research of the Ohio State and the Michigan studies. This situation may be caused either by the slow application of current theoretical models of leadership to criminal justice organizations or the limited number of reliable instruments to test the new theoretical positions. However, some new research, particularly in the police field, does tell us about leadership in criminal justice agencies; from it, we can draw implications for management.
Research by Kuykendall and Unsinger (1982) suggested that police managers have a preferred leadership orientation. Employing an instrument created by Hershey and Blanchard (1977), the researchers found that police managers are likely to use styles of leadership known as selling (high task and high relationship emphasis), telling (high task and low relationship emphasis), and participating (high relationship and low task emphasis), with very little concern for delegating (low relationship and low task emphasis). Of these styles of leadership, which are similar to those discussed previously, the most preferred style is selling. The researchers suggest that police managers are no less effective than managers in other organizational settings and that the selling, telling, and participating styles lead to organizational effectiveness.
Similar findings were generated by Swanson et al. (1988) in their research involving 104 police supervisors in the Southeast in the late 1970s. Using the managerial grid, the researchers found that their sample of police supervisors showed high concern for both production and people and emphasized team management in their organizations. Employing other measures, the researchers also found that police supervisors used a style of communication that emphasized the open and candid expression of their feelings and knowledge to subordinates rather than a style of communication that emphasized feedback from subordinates to managers about their supervisory capabilities. This research suggested that police managers had an open communication style with subordinates and supported the idea that police managers were indeed democratic in their leadership styles (at least, they professed to be).
Later research, however, suggests that such a participative and democratic leadership style is not as ubiquitous in police organizations as previously indicated. Auten (1985), for example, found in his sample of police supervisors and operations personnel in state police agencies in Illinois that the dominant managerial model was the traditional paramilitary one, with one-way communication. In addition, these police supervisors and operations personnel strongly believed that they had no meaningful role in organizational decision-making. The researchers suggest that there were communications breakdowns between the supervisory and operations personnel and the administrative heads of the agencies.
Not only is there a limited consensus on what type of leadership styles predominate among police managers and administrators, but when police supervisors are asked to think about a leadership style as opposed to acting out a style in a specific situation, they tend to change their approaches to leadership. Clearly, what a supervisor regards as an appropriate style of leadership may not be in agreement with what he or she actually does in a given situation. Current research, for example, on occupational stress, high turnover, absenteeism, and substance abuse in the police field suggests that the traditional paramilitary structure of police organizations, with its emphasis on an autocratic style of leadership, creates and perpetuates these problems. These problems may be traced to other factors in the police role, such as the danger associated with the job, yet it is important to examine how specific leadership styles contribute to many of these problems. Much leadership research in policing is lacking in this area (Klofas et al., 2003).
Also, concerns have also been raised about leadership in the courts, prisons, and probation and parole organizations. Leaders of these departments have problems trying to understand the political process and how it affects their organizations. Many have concerns about how much of their organizations they really control, particularly in tight fiscal times when resources are stretched and competition among social service agencies for finite dollars is fierce. Like police administrators, court and correctional administrators are not often expected to perform tasks that they agree with nor have the resources to successfully complete. A prime example of this difficulty is the “three strikes” initiative that swept the country during the early 1990s. For many departments of corrections’ leaders and prison administrators, such a law was impossible to live with and had dire practical consequences for prison management. Yet, its political appeal was so great that political leaders jumped on the bandwagon to pass laws that were difficult to implement and, in some cases, draconian in their effects (Irwin and Austin, 1995).
Klofas et al. (2003) mentioned a review of the Leadership Institute offered by the California Department of Corrections showed that effective qualities of leaders can be identified and taught to criminal justice administrators. The program, however, must be evaluated to determine its effectiveness in transmitting the principles of leadership to the real world of criminal justice management and administration. Such future evaluations will help identify primary elements of criminal justice leadership and will also prove invaluable to criminal justice administrators in confronting the day-to-day challenges of being leaders of large public organizations.
Challenges to the Criminal Justice Leadership
Given the current state of leadership research in both police organizations and correctional organizations, it is recommended that the following issues be addressed:
- Additional research needs to be done on how criminal justice administrators actually lead their organizations. This is because much existing research is out of date and tells us little about the increasing complexities of the leadership process.
- The contemporary models of leadership offered by organizational behavior theory need to be examined. Contingency approaches should be examined in relation to criminal justice organizations, along with the refinement of instruments to test these theories in the criminal justice environment. The situational factors influencing the leadership process must be examined in the operations of criminal justice systems.
- To understand fully the leadership phenomenon in criminal justice organizations, they must use the new methodologies to look at the intricacies associated with the leadership process. Traditional survey methods in criminal justice organizations have yielded some valuable information, yet field methods would provide information about the actual leadership mechanisms used by criminal justice administrators. To understand the leadership process, it is helpful to watch and document what criminal justice leaders actually do and, more important, be able to distinguish effective criminal justice leaders from ineffective ones.
- Lastly, criminal justice organizations need to discuss how much they can expect of criminal justice managers in terms of leadership. It is common to blame the poor performance of subordinates on ineffective management or leadership. On many occasions, because the chief has limited resources and multiple demands, all community expectations for police services cannot be met. Too often the chief is viewed as an ineffective leader when leadership has little to do with this problem. To be effective, a leader must provide some degree of control over the external environment. But we need to be realistic about how much a police administrator can control. Perhaps, for this reason, many experts recommend that incoming police chiefs develop clear and stable relations with local political groups so that expectations can be spelled out on both sides.
Conclusion
The fact is that individuals are either elected or appointed to lead criminal justice organizations. These leaders usually have come up through the ranks of the organization. They understand the importance of creating and setting the “tone” in the organization and, in the words of Schein (1997), influencing the culture of the organization. Indeed, criminal justice literature is replete with accounts of both the good and the bad in the cultures of criminal justice organizations. Whether these accounts reflect corruption in police organizations or the alleged violence and brutality of correctional work, concerns have been raised about how such cultures are created, sustained, and perpetuated in criminal justice organizations. For many, the issue hinges on the role of leadership in influencing organizational culture. Stojkovic and Farkas (2003) have noted the importance of leadership to organizational culture. Their research suggested that effective leadership within criminal justice organizations must pay attention to how cultures are created, the mechanisms which transmit culture to new employees, the role of leaders in the transmission of culture, and how culture can be influenced by administrators. Future research in criminal justice leadership will have to address the importance of organizational culture and offer suggestions on how it can be created and nurtured to fulfill the organizational goals of criminal justice organizations.
References
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Swanson, C.R., Territo, L. & Taylor, R.W. (1988). Police Administration: Structures, Processes and Behavior, 2nd ed., New York: MacMillan.
Wright, K.N. (1999, Summer/Fall). Leadership Is the Key to Ethical Practice in Criminal Justice Agencies. Criminal Justice Ethics, 18(2): 2.