The criminal justice system involves leadership and management just like any other society to steer the system. In this system, the leadership is involved with commanding, control span as well as leadership styles. Each individual in the system needs to have a clear identification concerning his/her function for easy operation and understanding the different system roles for effective goal attainment. Within this system, there are provided laws and regulations which guide the members on how to relate with each other and their superiors, as well as how to apply them when it comes to exercising justice to everyone in a fair manner. As a result, readership in this system entails dedication, commitment as well as taking risks of the person involved. The leader’s success is based on the learning and communication skills that he possesses necessary in carrying out his duty. Characters such as confidence, sound decision making, responsibility, social, persistence, and self-reliance among others are necessary for a leader to be able to achieve leadership goals (Allen & Sawhney 2009).
However, there have always been issues regarding negative undertakings within the system whose sources trickles down from the leadership positions to the members of the department, for instance in the policing department, several issues including corruption, unreasonable traffic stops, and police brutality are some of the issues leaders have the power to control, but in most cases, they have used their power to strengthen these vices. There have been incidents that involve violations of ethical rights from the members of the criminal justice system. For example, a significant number of employed jail officers have been reported being arrested for committing criminal activities. Among their charges include prisoner’s assault as well as other cases like theft. Also, police officers have been blamed for excessively using force on victims of crimes, ranging from confession by force to brutal violation. There has been the main incident that has heated the issue of violation within the criminal justice field with a question of whether leaders are aware of the happenings or whether they have their hands in the incidents.
The main concerns about the issue of violations are: whether they are common phenomena in the criminal justice field, the reason that propagates them, and the possibility of their prevention with consideration whether they might be unavoidable occurrences in the criminal justice field. It is important to note that the criminal justice field is not only the place where unethical, inappropriate, and illegal behaviors occur but also in other organizations such as schools and other social services fields. Cases of corruption, excessive use of force, acts of brutality and violation, exploitation and harassment of subjects involved, and other unethical action are common in these organizations.
In one dimension, the violation can be considered to be contributed by the fallibility of human beings. The same drive that makes any individual somewhere else hurt others has its impact on the employees of the criminal justice-making them be involved in this unethical behavior. Also, the environment of the criminal justice field may contribute to the inappropriate action by the members. This is so because the officers involved in law enforcement are trained to view people as being both laws abiding as well as criminals, which allows them to make any traffic stop, cause a hurt, or event arrest from a minor offense. These actions have changed people’s perception concerning law enforcement officers creating a mentality of “us against them” something that has created a boundary between the two parties. As a result, individuals deliberately overstep ethical limits with the justification of their action, an aspect that forces the officers to view the inappropriate actions they impose on the victims (Ashworth 2005).
In addition, mostly within the criminal justice organization, the behaviors done by the convicted individuals like the prisoner might provoke the employee’s dehumanization which will lead to unpleasant action. For instance, the restriction of the prisoner’s, parolees’, and probationer’s freedom is legally done, though these clients express their gratitude for the service they receive. They more than not reciprocate through insults and disparaging remarks and in severe cases they use their urine and feces to attack the officers. As a result, the provoked officer may respond unethically by violence where the prisoners get assaulted. This perspective of the organizational climate provides just a small part of the explanation regarding the employment of unethical behaviors within the criminal justice work (Cronkhite 2007).
However, a significant portion of this story is heavily dependent on the leadership within these police and correctional agencies. The greatest determinant of the magnitude of ethical or unethical behavior within a criminal justice agency is the quality of the leadership of the agency. This implies that the interest of leaders in promoting employees’ ethical standards of practices determines the misuse of power, corruption, harassment, police brutality, and their involvement in criminal activities. The chief executive officer is the core regulator of ethical behavior within the criminal justice field. Accordingly, his standards of ethics and those of individual team management will rime with those of the whole agency. Even though any organization tends to exercise any of the above-isolated incidents, their repeated occurrence within the criminal justice field has a significant reliance on the agency’s management (Samaha 2005).
How is this so? Someone might ask. In any organization, it is quite common that employees adhere to what concerns their boss most. In the criminal justice agency, the leader must make sure that the subordinates observe ethical practices. The chief executive thus is obliged to define and set the social principles and ensure they adhere to them over time with meticulousness. In most agencies, personnel is not restricted on the dehumanizing language they use when giving details or describing their clients, and the unethical behavior that they do within and outside the agency is ignored. As a result of failure in addressing professional conducts of the officers by the chief executive, ignorance of reviewing the conduction of ethical practices, and failure to inspect how well the officers apply the required ethical values within and outside their field, intensive incidents are prone to not only happen but happen on regular bases.
Staff accountability in criminal justice agencies has been and continues to be a lame factor that positively is very essential in ensuring ethical practices are observed. It is positive that staff will do what is inspected than what is expected. Hence the leader should put more emphasis on inspection of the expected practices by monitoring the officer’s behavior in assuring that corrective and observance of action is taken. Leaders need to employ appropriate action on a restricted procedure when a violation of a set standard is noticed and sanction the involved party. In addition to staff’s accountability attention, criminal justice agencies have to employ ethical practices as their culture. This involves leaders developing a professionalism perception which will saturate the whole agency, by making these practices the mark of the employee and the organization. As a result, through the integration of ethical practices to professionalism, both the spirit and the character of the members of the agency and the agency itself will be improved.
The success of this will be based on the CEO’s communication of ethics to the staff, who by identifying that their boss values ethics will practice them personally. In addition to this, consistency is important in ensuring that rules are uniformly applied in all departments within the institution and they are followed to the letter. “But all this has been done in many agencies.” Someone will interject. That is true. However, leaders have been very effective in talking but not walking their talk. After stressing the importance of attending to ethical practices, they then turn into a different route with a shield of impunity in their practices, gradually losing the subordinate’s confidence and compliance. I tend to believe that employees of the criminal justice field are the most perceptive staff to pretense in an organization setting. It is important to note that leadership is symbolic. Anything that revolves within the leadership bracket will have a significant impact within that organization (Klofas et al 1998).
Thus in response to the raised concerns, it can be interpreted that ethical behavior levels within different criminal justice agencies vary. Though not completely free, some agencies have high standards of observance with an impressive record of positive ethical practices associated with infrequent cases of violation. However, other criminal justice communities are characterized by ethical violations with regular cases of brutality, misconduct, and corruption. However, the latter does not mean that this is the norm in these agencies rather it is a clear exception. This implies that these agencies can change their culture. These ethical violations occur due to a lack of someone who would ensure that staffs focus on ethical standards in their conduct.
In addition, the criminal justice system is surrounded by many antagonists who include criminals themselves, the public, politicians as well as courts. Blames concerning daily undertakings are heaped on these agencies as failures to perfect other institutions are based on criminal justice practices. Despite this, the employment of strong leadership within these agencies can overcome the blame tendency and motivate good conduct within the system. Opposite of this will only increase- as it has been the case- cases of unethical behaviors kill the staff’s morale, bring unnecessary tension between leaders and their subordinates causing massive fragmentation. More so, the executive committee will be interfered with and regular divergence among staff will be intensive (Leng & Chiu1985).
However, the unethical behaviors within the police and other instructional communities can be prevented, by putting in place a stable and strong leadership to instigate loyalty, motivate hard work and dedication, regulate job stress, achieve togetherness and binder to the mission of the organization, encourage personal achievement and create a ground for moral and ethic behaviors. Without dealing with issues of ethical values, it is impossible to attain effective criminal justice practice. Through the definition of the organization’s mission and culture that agrees with the dignity of the public, there is a presence of guidelines to criminal justice practices. However, despite the understanding by the officers that they should observe the rich standard of good conduct, strong leadership is the key to this accomplishment (Samaha 2005).
Reference list
Allen, J. M. & Sawhney, R. (2009). Administration and management in criminal justice: A service quality approach. Fontanella: SAGE.
Ashworth, A. (2005). Sentencing and criminal justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cronkhite, C. L. (2007). Criminal justice administration: Strategies for the 21st century. Montreal: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Klofas, S. K., Stojkovic, S., Kalinich, D. & Klofas, J. (1998). Criminal justice organizations: administration and management. Livonia: West/Wadsworth Pub. Co.
Leng, S. & Chiu, H. (1985). Criminal justice in Post-Mao China: Analysis and documents. NY: SUNY.
Samaha, J. (2005). Criminal Justice. Boston: Cengage Learning.