This paper examines the budgeting process within criminal justice organizations, identifying four major budget formats: line-item, performance, program, and PPBS/zero-based budgeting. It explains why the line-item budget remains the most frequently used format, detailing its advantages, component parts, and weaknesses. The paper also discusses performance and program budgets, as well as the rise and fall of PPBS and zero-based budgeting in the 1970s. Finally, it addresses how criminal justice administrators supplement and stretch limited budgets, including the shift toward alternative sentencing and sentencing reform as cost-saving strategies.
Criminal justice organizations have relied on several distinct budget formats over the years. The four major types used historically are the line-item budget, the performance budget, the program budget, and PPBS (planning-programming-budgeting systems) / zero-based budgeting. Each format carries its own advantages, limitations, and levels of complexity.
The most common type of budget format used by criminal justice organizations is the line-item budget. This format offers the advantage of being clear, consistent, and easily used even by individuals not well-versed in complicated accounting procedures. It can also be understood by those with no background in accounting at all, such as politicians from whom the criminal justice agency is requesting funds.
The line-item budget lists the major expenditure categories used by the department — such as personnel, equipment, and capital outlays — with the amounts of money needed and expected listed next to each item or category. Its great weakness, however, is that it reinforces frequently cited problems in state and local governments: inflexibility, limited ability for individual performance evaluation, and the tendency to base every year's budget on the previous year's figures. This can create complacency and stasis rather than foster creative financial solutions.
The performance budget requires more complicated accounting than the line-item budget and relates the volume or amount of work done on a particular project to the amount of money spent on it. It shifts the focus to outputs and inputs rather than simple expenditure categories. This can improve departmental evaluation because of its emphasis on efficiency and the increased information it provides to reviewers both inside and outside the agency.
However, performance budgets are typically better suited to organizations where work is easily quantifiable — such as construction and manufacturing — rather than government agencies. The format is expensive to implement and operate, and it requires additional skilled accounting staff to develop and maintain.
Criminal justice agencies rarely use a program budget, although this format does offer notable advantages. It places a strong emphasis on different programs' social utility and strives to define the relationship between policy objectives, programs, and specific expenditures. For example, it may cite the amount of money allocated to DUI prevention and related arrests. This format justifies and explains budget areas to provide accountability for objectives, enabling both employees and politicians to understand departmental goals. As with performance budgets, however, it can be expensive to implement. Peak (2009) provides a thorough overview of how these formats apply to criminal justice administration.
"1970s budgeting systems and their decline"
"Cost-saving strategies in criminal justice agencies"
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