Is the public a customer of the criminal justice system? If so, to what degree should criminal justice agencies respond to public demand for services?
The public can be discussed as the customer of the criminal justice system because all the criminal justice organizations, agencies, and the police work to respond to the public’s needs while protecting citizens as customers. The extent to which different criminal justice agencies should address the public demand for specific services can be determined according to the nature of the demand (Peak, 2010, p. 253).
Thus, it is important to find the balance between responding to all the public demands, protecting the public’s security, and maintaining justice in the society. In spite of the fact that researchers focus on the obvious customization of police services because of the constantly increasing public’s demands as the negative aspects, these tendencies should be addressed because the increase in the demand can reflect the obvious social problems (Kania, 2008, p. 238).
Paying much attention to avoiding the customization trends, criminal justice agencies should also focus on the causes which lead to developing such tendencies.
The public is the main customer of the criminal justice system that is why the functioning of the agencies and police should be influenced by the public’s needs (Peak, 2010, p. 253). From this point, the degree to which the agencies and police should address the public’s demands is rather high. Although there are possible negative consequences of the tendencies’ development, criminal justice agencies should reform and improve their approaches to this issue.
Can leader effectiveness be learned? Explain why or why not. If so, explain how. Define, in criminal justice context, the meaning of effectiveness.
The leader effectiveness can be learned only partially and with references to the concrete aspects because today it is not enough to discuss effective leadership only as the set of definite traits characteristic for the leader. Leadership is the ability to affect people and their actions, and leader’s traits can be trained, but the leader effectiveness is rather difficult to be learned and measured appropriately (Robbins & Judge, 2009, p. 368-370).
The situational context is necessary to discuss achievements, quality of the work, and effectiveness of operations. Thus, the leader effectiveness cannot be learned completely because the main focus should be on the process, the leader’s impact on the organization, and the quality of the interactions and exchanges between leaders and other members of the team.
While focusing on the leadership effectiveness as influenced by only the set of attributes, it is possible to discuss the question from the perspective of the leader’s demonstration of certain qualities (Peak, 2010, p. 39-40).
However, it is necessary to focus on the effectiveness as associated with the process, quality, high results, and achievements. In this case, the effectiveness can be learned only with the focus on all the aspects of leadership.
Referring to the criminal justice context, the meaning of effectiveness can be defined as the level to which criminal justice managers or leaders can realize their complex tasks related to the field of leadership, organization, regulating, and policymaking (Kania, 2008, p. 61-62). Thus, leaders in the sphere of criminal justice should direct, supervise, and regulate at several levels in order to contribute to the needs of the organization and community.
References
Kania, R. E. (2008). Managing criminal justice organizations: An introduction. Newark, NJ: Lexis Nexis Matthew Bender.
Peak, K. (2010). Justice administration: Police, courts, and corrections management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.
Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2009). Organizational behavior. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.