Supervisory Practices in Criminal Justice

Supervisory Practices in Criminal Justice

Scenario # 1

Introduction

A supervisor plays a significant role in managing and ensuring a continuous productivity in the workplace. As the traditional ways of working and dealing with employees are changing and emerging trends at workplaces, especially in the police department, call for introducing new accountability and leadership within these organizations. But there are various difficulties associated with the proposed changes in such organizations such dealing with problem employees. The phenomenon occurs more often than supervisors and managers would like. As with everything and every human being in this world, police officers are not perfect. They differ from each in terms of performance, attitude personal needs and perceptions. Effectively dealing with such a diverse workforce is an art that supervisors should gain mastery of.

Excellent leadership and management skills are essential qualities of a police officer. Effect management, among other qualities, requires ensuring discipline in their respective departments. And if the supervisors or sergeants fail to do so, they are in fact allowing bad behavior and disciplinary problems within police units. As many contemporary scholars suggest, sergeant should develop an authoritative stance when dealing with the problems of discipline in the organizations in order to prevent bad behavior and other disciplinary issues from occurring in their units (Chambers, 1998).

Evaluation of Sergeant' Response

Officer Stevens-who was on duty in the evening- decided to ignore the situation and instead opted to merely report the incident to the shift lieutenant about the bad behavior of the two junior police officers during the work hours within the premises of department building. According to research into the area, it is, under normal conditions, expected from the senior officers to swiftly respond to the disciplinary problems and other issues that demand prompt response, especially when badly behaving employee is involved as to prevent from others from doing behaving the same way in future (Furnham & Taylor, 2011). But Officer Stevens failed to do so.

Here Officer Steven's choice of holding back his immediate response should be assessed with detail in order to better understand why he opted not to take disciplinary action at the spot. One of the reasons behind Steven' silence at the time of incident indicates that perhaps he thought immediate response was not necessary. Since the two officers have almost finished the joke when Officer Steven noticed the presence of a female officer nearby, he might have thought it would be appropriate to pursue the matter in detail and thus reported to the higher authority, hoping that shift lieutenant was in a better position to take a much stronger and stricter action against those officers.

Moreover, Steven's immediate response could have provoked the officers if they were the type of officers who are always looking for troubles in the workplace. Therefore, Steven immediate reaction to the situation could have disrupted the workplace environment and could result in more embarrassing situation for both the sergeant and the female officer present at that moment.

Furthermore, if the badly behaving officers were newly ...