Managing Criminal Justice Organizations

For a criminal justice manager, staffing and personnel issues are one of their primary responsibilities. Staffing and personnel issues in a law enforcement organization include hiring employees, fostering their career development, protecting their employment rights, disciplining them, and promoting them. If a criminal justice manager is to be successful in this aspect, a working knowledge of civil service rules and equal employment opportunity laws are fundamental. Most criminal justice staffing procedures are covered under civil-service rules and regulations, but there can be some exceptions. Many elected criminal justice officials and their personal appointees are exempt from some aspects of civil rights laws and regulations. To understand how we got to the current means of staffing, both by civil-service law and political appointment, it is necessary to look back at the historical developments in public personnel practices.

The Jeffersonian ideals influenced the manner in which both the states and the federal government selected people for public service positions. Individuals were selected for government employment based on a concept of fitness of character based on one’s good family background, educational level, social status, and military or political service during the revolution. This concept was altered when Andrew Jackson assumed the presidency in 1829.

During his time in office, Jackson’s prime measure for being appointed to a public service position was political loyalty. There was a commitment to a loyalty-based patronage system for selecting individuals to serve in government, Jackson’s critics called it a “spoils system.” It was important for elected officials to keep their patrons in office as a means of retaining their own jobs. The patronage system offered advantages for the political system by maintaining an active party organization, promoting intraparty cohesion, attracting voters and supporters, financing the political party and its candidates, securing favorable government actions, and creating disciplined policymaking along party lines.

In 1883 the Pendleton Act was passed, which was the first federal civil-service law which required that an appointment or promotion shall be given to the man best fitted to perform the duties of the position, and suitability for such position should be determined by open, fair, honest, impartial, and competitive examination. Items that were featured in the Pendleton Act of 1883 included the following: merit hiring with objective standards, competitive examinations for employee selection, probationary employment tenure, a preference given to veterans, freedom from political contribution solicitations, a requirement of annual reports of government agencies, and the creation of the federal civil-service commission. This marked the decline in the patronage selection of public servants, although it did not disappear completely.

In 1930, the Wickersham commission conducted hearings into American criminal justice practices. As a result of those hearings, the Wickersham commission made recommendations that had a considerable influence on all aspects of criminal justice, including improved personnel practices. This led to an era of professionalism and managerial emphasis which fostered the ideas of scientific management and a growing emphasis on credentialism, or possessing the right credentials, transcripts, and documents to demonstrate individual’s competence for a job.

In 1967, the U.S. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice released a series of Task Force reports which offered more managerial and personnel reforms that were not included in previous reform recommendations of earlier eras. Included in these new recommendations were the following: a state-set minimum training and selection standard, minority affirmative action recruitment, and implementation of career-development programs.

While the U.S. Congress passed the civil rights act of 1964, it was not until the equal employment opportunity act of 1972 that civil rights laws were applied explicitly to state and local units of government. This provided all Americans regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, religion, political preference and ideology, or physical handicap the equality of opportunity. It is disappointing to look back in history and see where we once were, but at the same time is satisfying to see how far we have come.

This brings us to the landscape of personnel practices in law enforcement organizations today and what the criminal justice manager needs to be cognizant of moving foward. As a criminal justice manager it is important to understand the basic principles of scientific management. In today’s language those basic principles consist of: job descriptions, job postings or advertisements, on-the-job training, employee supervision and evaluation, and finally employee coordination and assignment.

One of the major concerns of any criminal justice manager is employee turnover. Employee turnover is the departure of experienced personnel and their replacement with newer, less experienced employees. It is normal to experience a moderate amount of turnover, as employees go off into retirement or seek improved career opportunities. Although criminal justice organizations lose experienced employees through employee turnover and bear the significant costs involved in the hiring and training of their replacements, organizations can benefit from the influx of new perspectives and individuals with recently acquired skills and competencies that may have been lacking in the departed employees.

A criminal justice manager needs to understand employee classification and the difference between regular or temporary employees. Regular employees are hired without a specific termination date, whereas temporary employees hold their position for a specific term. Relative to this, it is important to understand the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and how it pertains to full-time employees that are classified as either exempt or not exempt. The Fair Labor Standards Act protects nonexempt employees with the requirement that they must be paid a minimum wage and extra when they work overtime. Upon hiring a new employee, their status under the Fair Labor Standards Act should be expressed to them.

When it comes to employee recruitment procedures, a criminal justice agency is required to provide equal employment opportunity for all individuals regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, marital status, political affiliation, disability, sex, or age. While a criminal justice agency is expected to recruit, hire, and assign individuals on the basis of their knowledge, skills, and abilities, the decision to employ an individual should be based on their qualifications for the particular position along with any affirmative action programs