A correctional facility uses dominance
and violence to keep its prisoners under control so that they do not
think of committing crimes once they're out of prison. The employees
of this facility are unhappy and think it is unethical to use force
with prisoners. However, the public is happy, and they feel safer
that their prisoners are being kept under cont
To what extent does an agency's
dependence on public opinion impede or encourage planned change?
Provide an example of a significant research study done in the
criminal justice field. How have the results of this research study
revolutionized the working of the criminal justice system?
2
What changes should the management of
the above mentioned correctional facility make to keep the employees
happy and prevent the public from going against the facility? What
are the positive effects of research in the criminal justice
profession since the President's Commission in 1967? What are the
negative effects?
Because planned change depends on
accurate forecasting in order to be unhindered by limited resources
(amongst other factors), forecasting must include considerations of
public opinion. Public opinion will not only play a part in possible
crescive change towards policy in general, but has a direct impact on
budgeting and thus on resources. “The rational politician knows
that, if their
policy votes deviate too far from the
opinion of their constituents, they risk their
electoral futures”(Nicholson-Crotty,
Peterson, & Ramirez, 2009, p. 630) Nicholson-Crotty et al
continue, “The electoral connection should be particularly strong
to deviations in criminal
justice policy from public opinion”.
(2009, p.635) Thus effective, rational, planned change must forecast
how the public will react to not to just the proposed change but to
any consequences the planned change might cause. Criminal justice
organizations that can not accurately foresee these issues will
likely be beset with resource issues related to budgeting.
In 1975, Douglas Lipton, Robert
Martinson, and Judith Wilks published a study of rehabilitation
programs and their effectiveness, The Effectiveness of
Correctional Treatment: A Survey of Treatment Evaluation Studies
. Martinson then wrote an article in The Public Interest in
which he stated that “rehabilitative efforts that have been
reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism”
(Pratt, Gau, & Franklin, 2011, p.72) This point of view was
capitalized on by both liberal and conservative
policy-makers who opposed the current indeterminate
sentencing standards. The influence of conservative policy makers
eventually shaped sentencing policy to get tough on crime, and
produced specific policies such as “Three Strikes” laws and Truth
in Sentencing guidelines. Sarre mentions the Supreme Court finding
of Mistretta v. United States, in which the Court upheld
federal sentencing guidelines that had removed the goal of
rehabilitation from consideration when sentencing convicts. (1999,
p.5) It has been argued that these policies have led to overcrowding
in prisons ( although the idiotic “War on Drugs” is a more likely
culprit for this issue, and I see few things as blatantly dishonest
as assigning an ideological blame for
overcrowding on sentencing guidelines when the bulk of the increase
can be accounted for on drug charges), and it has also been argued
that these policies have been responsible
for the drop in crime over the last twenty years (although other
factors may include demographic changes and higher rates of
suburbanization) Petersilia notes not just the controversy
caused by Martinson's work, but found it of “critical” influence.
(1987, p. vi)
Nicholson-Crotty, S., Peterson, D. A.
M., & Ramirez, M. D. (2009). Dynamic representation(s): Federal
criminal justice policy and an alternative dimension of public mood.
Political Behavior, 31(4), 629–655.
doi:10.1007/s11109-009-9085-1
Petersilia, J. (1987). The influence
of criminal justice research. RAND, Santa Monica, CA. Retrieved
September 3, 2014 from
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/106799NCJRS.pdf
Pratt, T., Gau, J., & Franklin, T.
(2011). Key ideas in criminology and criminal justice. SAGE
Publications. Retrieved September 3, 2014 from
http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/36811_6.pdf
Sarre, R. (1999). Beyond “What
Works?”A 25 year jubilee retrospective. Presented at the History of
Crime, Policing and Punishment Conference, Canberra: Australian
Institute of Criminology. Retrieved September 3, 2014 from
http://192.190.66.70/media_library/conferences/hcpp/sarre.pdf
Lipton, Martinson, and Wilks
Mistretta v. United States
Why does the rehabilitation crowd
constantly pop off about the failure of deterrence, ignore all
evidence suggesting the fallibility of rehabilitiation, and remain
completely silent on the value of incapicitation?
Considering that prison staff share one
overriding goal with the public, that of keeping criminals
incapacitated from causing harm to the public at large, it is
necessary to bring about organizational development with the goal of
maintaining guard morale and job satisfaction while performing their
duty to society. Doble and Klein report that the public is
preoccupied with personal safety (2009, P.293) If the public's
opinion is that control over inmate behavior benefits society, and
that perception conforms to prison reality, then a training program
and a management initiative must educate guards regarding the
benefits of that policy. Salinas identifies the basic objectives of
prison staff as maintaining security and order. (2009, p.12)
In DiIulio’s typology of prison
management, the control model is based upon punishment; Salinas
states that this punishment must be swift and visible to other
inmates in order to encourage compliance with prison order. (2009,
p.22) Skarbek contends that prison staff can be prevented from
maintaining this order by corruption and and by punishment costs
(2012, p.96) Indeed, maintaining order is of obvious concern for
prison staff, as Stafford points out that CO's have one of the
highest rates of on-the-job-injury which is directly tied to inmate
violence.( 2013, para. 2) The goal of our organizational development
should center on these concerns.
Marquart studied an informal system of
force in a Texas prison unit; although it was effective in
maintaining control, he found that the the methods were illegal and
possibly based on racial grounds.(1986) This study is useful in
contrasting methods and highlights the necessity of a formal and
legally sanctioned method of use of force.
The positive effects of research have
included a more realistic examination rehabilitation, a reductiion in
the ideal of rehabilitation as a goal in crime control, a better use
of police resources in “hot spot” policing, and the idea of a
rational approach using the scientiifc model in improving police
services. Willis,with some justification, describes the resistance
to such reform from LE agencies, and discusses ways to better mesh
research with police experience. He concludes that advancing police
reform relies on focusing on what can be gained by unity between LE
and researchers, not by focusing on the differences. (2013, p. 11)
The negative effects of research are
mainly tied with the continuation of the “poverty pitfall”
research coming out of the Chicago School. The “poverty pitfall”
is my description of the fundamentally incorrect idea that poverty
causes crime. The continuation of this line of thought (and of the
similar lines originating in Marxist “thought”) have resulted in
a dogma, not a body of research. The negative effects from such
include anti-LE propaganda, identity politics, and dishonest
journalism in portraying violent criminals as victims.
Doble, J., &
Klein, J. (2009). Punishing criminals, the public’s view: An
Alabama survey. Federal Sentencing Reporter, 21(4),
291–293.
doi:http://dx.doi.org.southuniversity.libproxy.edmc.edu/10.1525/fsr.2009.21.4.291
Marquart, J. W.
(1986). Prison guards and the use of physical coercion as a mechanism
of prisoner control. Criminology, 24(2), 347–366.
Retrieved September 4, 2014 from
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=i3h&AN=16305288&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Salinas, G. (2009,
Summer). A Preliminary Analysis: Prison Models and
PrisonManagement Models and the Texas Prison System. Texas State
University. Retrieved September 4, 2014 from
https://www.academia.edu/1195462/A_Preliminary_Analysis_Prison_Models_and_Prison_Management_Models_and_the_Texas_Prison_System
Skarbek, D. (2012).
Prison gangs, norms, and organizations. Journal of Economic
Behavior & Organization, 82(1), 96–109.
doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2012.01.002
Stallworth, R. (2013, June 11). The war
beyond the walls:We are under attack inside the walls and now outside
of them as well. CorrectionsOne. Retrieved August 17, 2014,
from
http://www.correctionsone.com/officer-safety/articles/6270478-The-war-beyond-the-walls/
Willis, J. J.
(2013). Improving police: What’s craft got to do with it?
Ideas in American Policing, 16. Retrieved August 10,
2014 from
https://www.policefoundation.org/sites/g/files/g798246/f/201306/IAP16_Willis_2.pdf
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