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CHAPTER 2
Structure of Criminal Justice Organizations
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, the students should be able to have achieved the following objectives:
• Define three major differences between the open system and the closed system.
• Define hierarchical and organic.
• Define the major differences between centralized and decentralized organizations.
• Define organizational mission, policy, and procedure.
• Understand the basics of agency budgeting.
KEY TERMS
centralization v. decentralization
chain of command
budgeting
complexity
formalization
hierarchy
human resource frame
informal communications network
informal leadership
Informal organizations
informal work groups
mechanistic organizations
mission
line item budgeting
organic organizations
policies and procedures
political frame
span of control
structural frame
allocation of funds
symbiotic frame
task specialization
LECTURE OUTLINE
I. Overview of Organizational Structure
A. Basic concepts
1. Mission
3. Procedures
4. Practices
B. Criminal justice organizations
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1. Vary in size and structure
2. No generic structure
3. There are key dimensions.
C. Two distinct models
1. Mechanistic organizations
2. Organic organizations
a. Professional
b. Informal
D. Mechanistic organizations
1. Purpose
2. Characteristics
a. Workers have a narrow range of duties.
b. Process is emphasized over outcomes.
3. Examples
a. Large metropolitan law enforcement agencies
b. Federal Bureau of Prisons
E. Organic organizations
1. Purpose
2. Characteristics
a. Tasks are not specialized.
b. Ends emphasized over means.
3. Examples
a. Small law enforcement agencies with less than 10 staff
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II. Dimensions of Organizational Structure
A. Basic elements
1. Task specialization
3. Span of control
5. Complexity
6. Allocation of personnel
B. Task specialization
1. Dividing the work into smaller tasks.
3. Low task specialization means worker performs a wide range of activities.
5. Law enforcement divides tasks by function.
C. Formalization
1. High degree of formalization:
2. Low degree of formalization:
a. Requires high level of expertise.
b. Subordinate high latitude and authority in decision-making.
c. Low dependency on written rules and regulations.
D. Span of control
2. Span of control depends on organization size, tasks, and skills of the employees.
4. Narrow span results in a tall hierarchy with numerous supervisors. levels
6. Wide span of control results in a flat hierarchy with few supervision levels.
E. Centralization v. decentralization
2. Centralization promotes control and predictability.
4. Decentralization promotes employees commitment to decision results.
F. Complexity
2. Horizontal complex organizational structures have a high number of sub-units.
G. Allocation of personnel
2. Staff personnel are support to the line personnel.
III. Mission, Policy, and Procedures
A. Mission
1. Provides the agency’s purpose, goals, and objectives.
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2. Molds activities, provides principles and values.
3. Serves as an anchor or direction.
5. Derived from legislation, professional standards, and community values.
B. Policies and procedures
2. Policies provide a statement of purpose action and rationale.
4. Civil litigation usually begins with review of policies and procedures.
5. Agencies need to ensure that mission, policies, and procedures are connected.
IV. Budgeting in Organizations
1. Budgeting is the process by which an agency receives and allocates funds.
3. Chief Executive Officer prepares and submits the budget.
4. Line item budgeting uses previous years’ budget calculations.
A. Approval
1. Agency submits budget to appropriate legislative body.
3. Economic conditions do influence public budgeting.
B. Execution of Budget
2. Agency executive manages the allocation and expenditures.
3. Auditing controls are set in place to ensure each division and/or department
receives its proper allocation.
V. Informal Structures in Organizations
A. Goals, activities or structures that do not appear “on paper”
2. Depends on administrator’s ability to control behaviors of staff.
B. Informal communications network
2. Every organization has “rumor mill” or “grapevine”.
3. Information moves quickly vertically across working units.
C. Informal work group
1. Individuals develop informal work groups to solve problems.
2. They are productive if they work toward organizational goals.
D. Informal leadership
VI. Organizational Frames
A. Structural frame
2. Productivity is enhanced through task specialization and the division of labor.
4. Organizational rationality prevails over personal preferences.
6. Problems and failures to meet goals and objectives can be remedied through
altering aspects of the organization’s structure.
B. Human resource frame
1. Based on premise that individuals have feelings, needs, and prejudices.
3. Most theories of motivation are based on this frame.
4. Criminal justice bureaucracies are criticized for lacking ability to motivate
staff.
C. Political frame
2. Unions demonstrate effectiveness of use of political power.
4. Informal leaders can resist attempts of organizational change.
D. Symbiotic frame
2. Problems arise when actors play out their parts poorly and symbols lose their
potency.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Organizations are complex, ambiguous and difficult to understand. Information within
organizations is typically incomplete, unreliable, and subject to multiple interpretations. Goals
that structure and process. To that end, this chapter provides an overview of the elements of the
formal structure of organizations and touches briefly on the emergence of informal structures, as
well as the forces in the organization that may support or confound the purpose of the
organization. As Barnard (1938) points out, the formal and informal states of organizations exist
simultaneously as a natural state; the informal structure is the oil that keeps the organizational
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circumvent the new set of control mechanisms; and administrators respond with more control
efforts, using more agency resources. This practice is antithetical to the principle of forming a
partnership between the informal and formal structures of an organization.
Budgeting in organizations has been called the “backbone” of any agency. It is the
process by which an agency receives and allocates funds in order to operate and achieve its
mission. Every public agency goes through a “budgeting cycle” each year. The chief executive
officer (CEO) is typically responsible to prepare and submit the yearly budget. The budget is
submitted to the appropriate legislative body that may add to or reduce the proposed budget.
Agencies often base their annual budget on the previous years’ request; this is commonly known
created and will be manifested in passive behavior from personnel, who will delegate minor
problems and situations upward. Moreover, an informal ‘‘code of silence’’ among line personnel
will be invoked within the informal organizational structure.
Managers and students of organizations should work with a holistic frame of reference
and consider the power and needs of the staff, as well as of external constituents, to better
understand how to create more effective agencies. A simple understanding of organizations with
the skeletal features of structure, policy and procedures, etc., is insufficient. Historically,
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Identify the impediments to altering the structure of a large criminal justice agency. Take
into account all of the issues involved with organizational structure.
3. Discuss the critical nature of budgeting. Who governs the allocations of funds to an
agency? Why is auditing of funds important in a publicly funded agency?
4. What steps should an administrator take to build a partnership between the agency’s
formal and informal structures? In your opinion, what role, if any, do leaders of the
informal structure have in building such a relationship?
5. Describe the role of the agency in promoting ethics. Do administrators have a duty to
indoctrinate agency members with organizational ethics?
DISCUSSION TOPICS/STUDENT ACTIVITIES
1. Form the class into three small groups designated as a jail group, a police department
group, and a district attorney’s office group. Have each group contact its related local
2. Form the students into five groups. Give the groups 30 minutes to analyze the case study
on page 47 of the text (Integrating Professional Staff into a Bureaucratic Structure).
3. Form the class into two groups and have them prepare a budget for a ten (10) officer
4. Have the students prepare a written mission statement for a local non-profit agency, i.e.
5. Form the students into two groups, one a largely conservative group, the second, a liberal
group. Have the two groups list the 5 most important criteria for police agencies. Join
back together as an entire class and compare/contrast the created lists.
INTERNET CONNECTIONS
1. View a concise explanation of span of control and hierarchies at
http://www.tutor2u.net/business/gcse/organisation_span_of_control.htm
2. Read Susan M. Heathfield’s informative article “How to Change Your Culture:
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4. View a discussion of 2011 Federal Budget issues at
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