Chapter 1 • The Study and Scope of Justice Administration

Questions for Review

1. Do the three justice components ( police, courts, and corrections) constitute a true system or are they more appropriately described as a process or a true nonsystem? Defend your response.

2. What are the legal and historical bases for a justice sys-tem and its administration in the United States? Why is the conflict- versus- consensus debate important?

3. What are some of the substantive ways in which public-and private- sector administration are similar? How are they dissimilar?

4. What elements of planned change must the justice administrator be familiar with in order to ensure that change is effected rationally and successfully?

5. Which method, a rational process or just muddling through, appears to be used in criminal justice policy-making today? Which method is probably best, given real- world realities? Explain your response. Questions for Review

Learn by Doing

1. Your criminal justice professor asks you to consider the CJS flow chart displayed on the inside cover of the text. Then, after reading this chapter, you are asked to prepare a paper concerning how this chart both implies that criminal justice agencies constitute a system as well as a non system. What will be your response? Alternatively, do you believe that the CJS most closely resembles a network or process ? Explain.

2. It is announced that because of financial shortfalls, your local police department must eliminate 10 percent of its officer positions through layoffs and retirements. a. Given the criminal justice planning adage that “ you cannot rock one end of the boat,” what might be the effects of such position reductions on your local criminal justice system? b. Assume instead that local revenues have increased in your jurisdiction, and your local police depart-ment is told it can add 10 percent more officers’ positions. What possible impacts on your local CJS might result?

3. Your criminal justice professor is working on a journal article concerning the social compact or contract the-ory of the origin of government. As her research assist-ant, you are assigned to summarize John Locke’s theory of same, including its significance and application to the U. S. CJS. What will be contained in your report?

4. The head of your state department of corrections wants to close the state’s oldest prison, now located in the state cap-itol; constructed in the 1920s, it is now extremely danger-ous as well as very expensive to operate. Although the new location would be in a community that is 50 miles away, the new location would be nearer the state capitol and offer a considerably larger labor pool of prospective prison employees as well as a much better public transportation system. Being politically astute, the director asks you and several of your fellow staff members to conduct a force-field analysis, looking at both communities to determine opposition and support for the move. Identify at least three forces or factors that are likely to support the decision to relocate the prison and three that are likely to oppose it.