Leading Group Challenges in Criminal Justice



Leading Group Challenges in Criminal Justice

Abstract

This paper explores the challenges faced by leading group in criminal justice organizations. The key challenges discussed include political and legal challenges, power and conflict, issues of communication, and substantive challenges. The paper also provides recommendations to overcome and deal with these challenges.

Introduction

Courts, police and corrections all comes under the criminal justice organization. Leaders of criminal justice mainly include correctional facilities officers, judges and law enforcement agencies (police). All of these leaders in the organization came across several challenges. The leaders of criminal justice organization should be competent to handle such challenges on a regular basis. The role that these criminal justice organizations play within the system of criminal justice can be determined by their leadership.

Discussion

There are a number of challenges currently faced by leaders of criminal justice organizations, some of them are discussed below.

Political and Legal Challenges

One of the foremost challenges faced by the criminal justice organizations is of political and legal pressures within and outside the system. Changes in the law have a vital and significant impact on corrections, courts and law enforcement officers. Police officers are the ones who reinforce laws; whereas, the system of court makes sure that all individuals sustain their rights (Schafer, 2009). On the other hand, political leaders have an essential role as nearly all state judges and prosecutors are elected to their office. There can be several changes near the election, especially in the leadership level of criminal justice organization. Thus, leaders of the criminal justice organizations must be aware of political alliances and stay inform regarding changing laws.

Power and Conflict

Today, most of the organization faced conflicts. On the other hand, criminal justice organizations come across conflict among the range of organizations. Law enforcement officers arrest criminals or suspects whilst the court takes a decision about punishment, if any, need to be enforced. The penitentiary system should guarantee that the punishment is carried out in orderly and safe manner. Thus, criminal justice organizations do not always have similar aims/ goals that result in conflict. For instance, the police force often desire to remove criminals from the cities; however, the court can have a goal of rehabilitating the wrongdoers within the society. Prisons, courts and police exercise a considerable amount of authority with these responsibilities. Leaders of the criminal justice organizations should keep a balance of power with principles of justice, equality and fairness (Podmore, 2004).

Issues of Communication

Having leaders in criminal justice organizations may be rewarding as well as challenging. There are two key obstacles that may have an effect on communication. First refers to individual barriers, or ones associating to an individual's own understanding or decoding of a message. Second refers to the organizational barrier, these are ones which draws out from the culture of an organization. The corrections, police and court system do not have same jargons that are used within their organization, which often emerges as a communication barrier between the criminal justice organization and ...