Organizational Trends and Motivational Theories in Criminal Justice

Introduction to Criminal Justice Organizational Trends

Criminal justice organizations have traditionally been comprised of public resources and structures, yet there have been significant movements toward different organizational styles that do not rely on the public domain for support. The privatization of criminal justice organizations occurs when such organizations are removed from public control and placed into private ownership. A major reason for this shift is a lack of funding or other resources on the part of public government to carry out the tasks at hand.

Privatized and Corporate Criminal Justice Structures

Privatized organizational structure is often quite different from the types of structures seen in public criminal justice organizations. Private organizations are frequently contracted by local governments to augment the already-established criminal justice structure. As a result, privatized organizations may be much smaller or more specialized in their organizational structure compared to traditional criminal justice organizations. This means they are often structured through a situational or contingency model of organization in order to provide greater flexibility to meet the demands of whatever the contract requires.

Corporate criminal justice organizations follow a similar pattern, based on the nature of their role within private criminal justice endeavors in the corporate world. They too tend to work alongside existing criminal justice organizations and thus do not follow a bureaucratic model as strictly as public criminal justice organizations do. These organizations are also often structured according to a situational or contingency model. However, corporate organizations do tend to have more structure overall, because they must align themselves with the rigid order of the larger corporation to which they belong.

Militarization and Bureaucratic Models

The militarization of criminal justice organizations takes a very different approach to organizational structure. These organizations are much larger and typically operate within a rigid bureaucratic structure. Within this model, organizational principles are applied somewhat rigidly, with the hierarchy principle given very high priority. Authority is very precisely allocated, with those higher up in the hierarchy holding more power. All communications follow through the chain of command, and control filters from the top down in an extremely rigid structure. There are also many functional divisions of labor within a militarized criminal justice organization.

Evolution of Behavioral and Organizational Theory

The behavioral theories that guide organizational behavior have evolved considerably from their historical roots. One of the earliest theories still in use today is that of the bureaucratic structure. First presented by Max Weber, a bureaucracy helps determine the flow of power and commands through a streamlined chain of command. This eliminates confusion and ensures that an organization follows a specific hierarchy effectively. It relies on rules and established procedures to ensure that the organization remains true to its rigid structure of command and control. The backbone of a bureaucracy is the hierarchical structure that establishes a chain of command and a given set of procedures to follow under specific circumstances.

This concept was built upon by James Q. Wilson, who posited that there should be a certain degree of flexibility within the bureaucracy. When members of the group are allowed greater flexibility and incentives to motivate them, there will be an increase in independent action, which helps keep the organization running smoothly without the delays of waiting for permission from the top of the chain of command. This philosophy helped restructure national law enforcement agencies, especially in relation to Bruce P. Smith's notion that criminal justice organizations should match economies of scale — arguing that the consolidation of smaller police forces into larger ones, replacing sheriffs with state police, and other centralizing efforts would provide for greater efficiency in law enforcement. This led to a large trend of centralizing criminal justice organizational structures to create more efficient and larger regulatory bodies.

As more and more bureaucracies began to show major cracks in their designs, there was a movement within theory toward a more flexible structure for law enforcement and criminal justice. In a bureaucracy, the rigidity of the hierarchy tends to hinder motivation for workers inside the organization. In response, new theories began to gain favor in some areas of law enforcement. First came the human relations model, which decreased autocratic authority within the hierarchy. The situational or contingency model is designed around motivational theories of behavior, which tend to emphasize that with higher levels of individual responsibility comes greater motivation to perform, and thus a more effective organization.