Personnel improvement policies and implementation strategies

Measuring Efficacy of Personnel in American Criminal Justice -- Difficulties in quantifying methods of prime prevention and control

As with all systems serving the public, the American criminal justice system strives to perfect itself to the utmost -- and a critical element of improving the system is rendering the personnel that work for the system more effective and determining of current individuals serving in police and prosecutorial capacities are currently competent at their occupations. Based on two decades of laboratory and field studies the growing body of research suggests that a community's belief in the system's legitimacy prevents crime. Lawrence Sherman (2003) notes "a strong correlation across a large sample of Chicago citizens between perceived legitimacy of police and willingness to obey the law."

However, unlike a corporation that can measure, for instance, the efficacy of the advertising department on the basis of how many widgets are sold, the criminal justice system is essentially reactive -- crime is affected by many exogenous factors that do not necessarily relate to the individuals that are employed by the system. The attacks on the Twin Towers did not mean that the NYPD specifically was 'asleep' -- other intelligence issues were also a factor, and merely because a prosecutor does not have a high conviction rate does not mean that he or she is ineffectual, rather the defendants might have been innocent, at least legally innocent according to faulty police accumulation of evidence according to the exclusionary rule.

Ways to manage personnel within the American criminal justice system other than crime rates currently include such factors as clearance rates, in terms of the speed in which a prosecutor or judge clears the docket of cases, or police response time, rather than number of incidents the police overall must deal with as a department. However, this does not address the additional problem of crime prevention, another critical aspect of measuring efficacy. In his report to Congress for the Justice Department, Lawrence Sherman has suggested in measuring specific area's likelihood of engaging in criminal practices when engaging in measuring the potential improvement for certain policies implemented by various criminal justice personnel in departments. For instance, neighborhoods with high populations of unsupervised male groups of teenagers often have a higher rate of crime and are often more difficulty to police.

Another way of determining the efficacy of American criminal justice personnel can be to demonstrate how proven contributors to climates of violence, such as smashed street lights, graffiti, and other related and observable but not directly cause-related factors have been reduced. In other words, achievable goals can be set that do not depend upon the immediate crime rate in the community, but still require law enforcement personnel to engage in creating a climate of greater trust, and reducing the opportunities to create crime.

This measuring strategy is the "unscientific" method of problem-oriented policing, in Sherman's words. (2003) In other words, rather than merely increasing numbers of police in areas in an attempt to reduce crime rates, what can be measured is the number of community meetings used to create a constant dialogue with the police with the hope of creating a sense of police rather than criminal legitimacy. Through the provision of legitimate job opportunities, the incentive for crime is reduced and thus also counts as a success for law enforcement personnel. When the police and prosecutors make community outreaches to troubled schools, students are encouraged to envision a future besides drugs and these efforts can be measured in numbers.