Bureaucracy, managerial disorganization, and administrative breakdown in criminal justice agencies

The ineffective police leader: Acts of commission and omission

“…For example, five to ten percent of corporate workers reported being the target of workplace bullying; among those reporting such experiences, eighty percent indicated the offender was their supervisor (Einarsen et al, 2007). Ineffective leadership, particularly the failure to act or respond to known problems, was identified as a recurrent factor in organizational failures (Dias & Vaughn, 2006;Garrett, 2004;Hall, 1980;McCabe, 2005;O'Hara, 2005). In policing, such organizational failures might have extended into matters that generated adversarial relationships with employees and/or the community, increased unionism, litigation, turn-over, or outside involvement in local police operations (Jermier & Berkes, 1979;Krimmel & Lindenmuth, 2001;O'Hara, 2005).…”

Parole, Neighborhood and Reentry Outcomes: A Contextualized Analysis

“…Research illustrates that criminal justice actors' focal concerns explain the variations in policing, prosecution, and sentencing (Albonetti, 1991;Spohn & Cederblom, 1991;Steffensmeier, 1980;Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000, 2001. The focal concerns perspective begins with the assumption that criminal justice actors constantly make sanctioning decisions; meanwhile, they always need to secure efficiency in the large institutional environment even when they have limited knowledge of the offenders from the cases they are processing (Dias & Vaughn, 2006;Ulmer & Johnson, 2004). For example, judges, facing uncertainty from the limited information of offenders, use important cognitive signposts to make decisions in order to maximally decrease the likelihood of recidivism.…”

The criminal justice system works!

“…Increasingly, this involves cross-agency cooperation in terms of evidencedbased decision making, information sharing, service delivery, and maintenance of shareholder interests (cf., Dias & Vaughn, 2006;Mears, 2007;Mears & Bacon, 2009). And evidence of this professionalized, cooperative approach can be seen not only in programs designed to serve special populations (Foley, 2008;Kakar, 2006;Matthews & Hubbard, 2008;Miller, Shutt, & Bernstein, 2010;Payne, 2008;Sharkey, Sander, & Jimerson, 2010;Wu, El-Bassel, Gilbert, Sarfo, & Seewald, 2010) but also components of the justice system, including law enforcement and crime prevention (Brown, 2006;O'Neill & McGloin, 2007), policeprobation partnerships (Murphy & Lutze, 2009), reentry (Bond & Gittell, 2010;Mears, Roman, Wolff, & Buck, 2006;Nellow, Schlager, & Caplan, 2008), sex offender notification (Beck & Travis, 2006), jail detention (Ruddell & Mays, 2007), and confinement (Cecil, McHale, Strozier, & Pietsch, 2008;Rengifo, Stemen, Dooley, Amidon, & Gendon, 2010).…”