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Criminal Justice Management
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Criminal Justice ManagementLecture 1: Organizations and organizational structures
Introduction
This is a basic course for 3rd bachelors. This is an English course. It’s a completely new
course. This course is based on the course of public management, so it’s completely new
and you don’t know what it’s going to be about. New names, such as Mintzberg, an
economist. Why study this? The alumni decided they lacked knowledge of management
when they went to work. Social reaction, not in the sense of criminalization, but this is
how the policy should or could think about dealing with deviants. You’ll work in an
organization later, and we’re going to talk about organizations and their structure.
A lot of the course material was in Dutch. Whenever anyone was asked to give a guest
lecture in English, people were very hesitant. The exam will be in English, the slides too,
the course will be given in English, the course material will be either in Dutch or in English,
it’s a mixed course. The guest lectures could be in Dutch as well.
The course is very broad. We won’t see how to develop a SWOP analysis. Objectives:
providing insight in the academic discipline focusing on public administration (PA) and
public management (PM) within the criminal justice system and introducing the wide
variety of management methods and techniques that are being used today in the different
criminal justice organizations.
The final competences: see slides. Ten courses, nine subjects. Something completely
different from other courses. The basic idea is you cannot rely on other courses.
Topics:
• Organizations and organizational structures within the criminal justice sector
• Scientific management
• Strategic management
• Strategic planning
• Change and quality management
• Internal and external communication
• Project management
• Human resources management and motivation
• Leadership
• Governance of security
Evaluation of the course: periodical evaluation is based on a written exam. No papers.
Questions will be derived from the different course modules; an example is provided on
Ufora. Also, a table of contents on Ufora.
What is criminal justice? “A complex social institution which regulates potential, alleged
and actual criminal activity within limits designed to protect people from wrongful
treatment and wrongful conviction.” Traditionally police, prosecution, courts and prisons.
They all have in common the state. Since the 80s, our thinking about criminal justice has
changed because there was a crime rise. Mainstream criminology: if welfare is increasing,
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,you’ll see a drop in crime (original reasoning). With the grow of wealth, we see a grow of
crime in the 60s. We have an economic collapse in the 70s due to oil crisis. If a lot of people
go without jobs, we pay for them, companies are not paying taxes, the debts are going up
of the state and crime rise is the consequence. The state is no longer capable of providing
security. Whatever the police do, it doesn’t work. In the 80s we look for someone else to
provide security. The new liberal paradigm: the citizen is responsible for what a citizen is
doing. For example, I leave open a door, and the key to my car is stolen, that’s my fault and
not the state’s. In the 70s and 80s we rethink how we’re dealing with crime. Other actors,
private security actors for example. This is where gated communities emerge. You see that
the community wardens are being introduced in the 90s (gemeenschapswacht). Social
mobility has risen, the state and the police were suffering by budget cuts. We see the
emergence of criminal justice with a lot of other actors now. Labour services,
environmental inspection, tax services,… In the very beginning we tend to focus on the
police, but the criminal justice system has been broadened with other aspects as well. May
they be state agents or private agents. This is going to be very important: there is a shift
with a management from government, were going to govern our citizens and build large
bureaucracies so everyone knows the procedures, we govern our state towards
governance of security, and this is the realization that the state is not the only actor.
So, the concept has changed from government to governance, and the concept of
management has changed as well. Managers work in organizations and take decisions in
a given set of cultural values and institutions. The main thing is that they are influenced
by the environment, and they are influencing the environment as well. When you start up
a business, you become in competition with other businesses, and this has an influence on
the environment. Whatever you do, as long as you change the environment, you’re
impacted by it as well. We’re influenced by PEST: political, economic, social and
technological evolutions have an impact on our organizations and how we function in it.
For example, many organizations are influenced by the political party in power. Many
organizations have this problem, f.e. UNIA established in the 00s, now Flanders has
decided to get out of Unia and to replace it by a human rights institution themselves, why
is that? Because there was a change in the political atmosphere as well. The economic
impact has an impact on any organization, f.e. UGent is talking about a budget cut, f.e.
closing facilities, not recruiting additional academic assistants. There is a paradigm shift.
It’s not a stable environment as you would think. Social: look at demographics for example
pension funds. People are living longer, and the bases are problematic. Technology, think
about predictive policing. If this were to work, what luxury would you have. You’re driving
your van, the system says: in this street, something will happen, and if something happens
and you’re able to prevent, what a luxury! Doing more stuff more efficiently. We have a
great believe in technology and this has an impact on how you work and think, think about
AI.
The study of management started during the industrial revolution: we all were spinning
back home, people were farmers, carpenters,… The women were often knitting and
making clothes and fabrics to sell to others. with this revolution we brought this in huge
machines, we didn’t need to have all these people in the countryside but in the factory, so
you need to coordinate them. We see a change, people draw to the cities, with no
background, no education. They are being used as slaves in factories. You still need some
coordination, you need discipline. People needed to start thinking about labour
coordination on a large scale.
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,So, PA/PM is an interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on government or governance.
Government: provide security, legislations, procedures… what we do needs to be clear to
the people. You see that the idea of studying the state, that this scientific research built on
law, economic, generic management, political science, and business studies organization
theory and social psychology. Today, legislation is virtually gone. Obiding by the rules is a
very important one, the focus on management obiding by the law is not the basis of
management anymore: but behavior of company etc. Governance: assertion that
government was not some stand-alone, monolithic actor, but was embedded in webs of
competing interests (realization in the 1950s). the state cannot do everything, provide
security for everyone at the same time at the same level. PA/PM can not be disconnected
from society. See slides!
Public Administration Public Management
Old-fashioned, traditional, introverted Modern, outward-looking
Static hierarchies and procedures Dynamic – leadership, innovation
Focus on following rules – compliance and Focus on managing resources – efficiency
accountability and performance
Focus on machinery of government Focus on multi-stakeholder governance
These differences tend to be exaggerated. Researched thing PA was normative, and they
wanted to connect the social sciences.
These are the basics of the course. Example of exam: use keywords! If you use the slides
and study them well, you’ll pass the course. F.e. question on 6 points, you’ll need 3 key
words. Look at the document and the focus document on Ufora. There’s also a table of
content with an introduction. Study the slides in great detail and the document on Ufora
covers the whole course and gives you the main focus!
1. Organizations
Organizations and their design are of a great importance. Why is that: you will end up
working in one. When we’re talking about criminal policy, you’re always confronted with
organizations.
Three explanations:
1) Institutional: what is an organization? A concrete, separate system, an entity: f.e. a
hospital, a police organization.
2) Instrumental: focus on structure, procedures, and delineation of responsibilities.
F.e. a local police force (f.e. Ghent) is responsible for security and safety in Ghent.
More instrumental point of view, it’s used to do something.
3) Process: focus on the process of organizing, on the activities. You look at what an
organization is doing to help understand what an organization is.
It all comes down to the same thing: consciously coordinated social entity, with relatively
clear identifiable boundaries that seeks to accomplish common objectives. Why social:
we’re working with people, management people. Conscious: we know we need to work
together, f.e. group paper is an organization. You know what you can do and what you
cannot do, within a certain field. You’re doing something for something, there’s a common
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, objective. This can be very vague and broad, f.e. the police, what is security and what is
safety? Very often we do not think about these items as separate items: we imagine
everyone knows what security is. To what extent does the police integrate different
aspects? It’s important what objective you want to achieve! If you want to provide security
to the citizens of Ghent: are we talking about security, safety, or both? What do we mean
when we talk about objectives? Are we sure we know what we need to do? It’s hardly the
case an organization knows what to achieve. People know the general idea, the money
they receive, and then they should be there. This is management: making clear what
objectives you want to achieve. F.e. paper: some want to pass, some want to exceed, some
say a 10 is enough. This common objective, there’s something wrong here. if you start
coordinating then, you’ll see you have a problem because of a different mindset. The basic
idea is that often we’re not aware we work with people that have different ideas of the
objectives we want to achieve: in the police, in research groups, everywhere. Different
ideas and different opinions. So, if we break this down: you have people, there’s
interaction, you can start managing this, very important! Look at buildings: if we’re talking
about interaction, there’s a police force in Oudenaarde, and the design of the building is
in three levels, and they talk about people of different floors, but they’re all people
working in the same building, but this has an impact. When we talk about mergers of
police forces, there were different cultures. Interaction between people can be managed.
Think about the building, or Panopticon: different wings with a central unit, and when
people work in one leg, they’ll identify themselves with the leg, and won’t identify
themselves with the other parts of the building. F.e. the dean wanted to establish a coffee
break, to informally meet each other and help stat conversation. This has not worked very
well. There are ways to help have interactions. An idea is the landscape: a big open space,
with all desks around them, and the idea is to share knowledge because you can see each
other. People then start to talk on the phone and the focus is lost, so they introduce a silent
zone. The way you build a building is very important for interaction, this is management!
Goal oriented: you won’t have a group for a group paper if you don’t have to write one.
Consciously coordinated: you try to work in departments for example. Giving group
papers an objective for example. Subdividing tasks for example. Very often people have
specific duties to do. Identifying boundaries, for example: do the police tell the
prosecutors what to do? No. But, you might have these problems when in prison you have
the Flemish government coming in, and they want to introduce more community activities
and sport, in order to integrate, but from a security perspective this is difficult, and they’ll
say no. It’s often not easy to say this is something we do, and this is something we don’t
do. Do we need police officers standing at school at 8 o clock? Or is this the responsibility
of the school? Who’s responsibility is this? In different police forces, they have different
approaches in Belgium. this discussion is ‘kerntakendebat’, what are the core duties of
any organization?
You have different organizations of nature as well. Some are closed, some are open. A
closed one is an organization that is not influenced by its environment. This is impossible
today, because we live in a volatile, complex environment: there is no predictability. You
can see this in how technology influences our lives. The way we organize ourselves is
different now. If you drive your van, and you see someone doing something bad, you pick
them up, and you had to back to the main police building and there you’d take fingerprints
and stuff, but now with the technology, they go out in the field, there’s software and
hardware called mobile office, which makes the van a mobile police station. There’s
internet, printers etc. You take the person, take them in the van, and do the job in the field.
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