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CHAPTER 3
The Criminal Justice System in Its Environment
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, the student will have achieved the following objectives:
• Understand the influence the environment has on criminal justice agencies
• Be able to explain environmental uncertainty vs. certainty
• Understand how environmental forces can decouple large organizations.
• Understand the process of scanning the environment.
• Understand how agency executives manage environmental inputs with
symbolism.
KEY TERMS
AMBER alert system
civil litigation
Civil Rights Act of 1964
coalition
constituencies
complex environment
cultural conditions
decoupled organization
demographic factors dominant
environmental states
environmental uncertainty
geographic conditions
heterogeneous
homogeneous
overlapping sub-groups
political conditions
political/legal system
service delivery
LECTURE OUTLINE
I. The Criminal Justice System in Its Environment
A. The environment is composed of forces
2. Legal
4. Economic
6. Ecological
7. Cultural
B. As environmental conditions change public agencies must adapt.
1. Forces affect agencies’ mission, policies, and procedures.
2. Agencies that fail to adapt lose resources or become extinct.
II. Defining the Environment of the Criminal Justice System
A. Technology changes
2. Community policing has reduced the use of patrol cars.
4. Video taping has reduced much guesswork.
6. Cell phones and smart phones have increased criminal justice efficiency.
B. Law
1. Criminal justice system is framed by legislation.
2. Case law
3. Civil Rights Act of 1964
a. Criminal justice agencies have added women and minorities.
b. Inmate civil suits have increased significantly.
C. Economic factors
2. Research on unemployment and crime rates is conflicting.
a. Increase of incarceration of African-American males is linked to economic
3. Economic downturns also have an adverse effect upon public agencies
a. Reduce spending and balance budgets.
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D. Demographic factors
1. Age, sex, race, ethnicity, and number of people in a community have an impact on
2. Migration and immigration impact demographics and community
organization.
a. Immigrants converge in urban areas.
E. Cultural conditions
1. Laws are codified social norms of a culture.
2. Examples
a. Prohibition
b. War on drugs
F. Ecological conditions
1. Geographical location, climate
3. Economic base: Industrial, service, agrarian
G. Political conditions
2. Court decisions are made in certain political climates.
3. Political pressure is directed by interest groups.
a. MADD: DUI enforcement
4. Cultural views and values become political.
III. The Political Environment of the Criminal Justice System
A. Formal system includes legislation at federal, state, and local levels.
2. They pass on demands of public to public service agencies.
3. They are subjected to influence of pressure groups.
B. Court system
1. Judges make decisions congruent to their values.
2. Judges reflect regional or political values.
C. Informal pressures
IV. Task Environment Elements Specific to the Criminal Justice System
A. Forces in the environment are directly related to agency goals.
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B. All elements are interdependent.
V. Environmental States
A. Simple environment
2. Example: police agencies in small communities
B. Complex environment
2. Example: police agencies in large cities
C. Static environment
2. Jails with same number and type of inmates
D. Dynamic environment
2. Urban police work
VI. Organizational Response to the Environment
A. Environmental uncertainty
1. Dynamic and complex environments have greater uncertainty.
2. An organization’s ability to respond appropriately to its environment is pivotal.
B. Decoupled organizations
2. Environments may have two sub-environments.
3. Overlapping sub-groups
a. Dominant coalition: small group of employees who oversee the
organization and dictate policy decisions
b. Work processors: majority of employees
c. The cues, pressures, and constraints sent to Dominant Coalition may differ
from those faced by Work Processors.
C. The process of decentralizing, or federalizing, large bureaucracies are typically
done so that the work process members have enough flexibility to deal with their
local clientele or to respond to the demands of their local constituents.
D. Decentralization is, in effect, a recognition that local environmental dimensions
may be different at different levels of the organization and that the organization
may face more than one environment.
VII. Managing Environmental Forces.
A. Organizations are open systems and are dependent on environmental systems for
direction and resources.
2. Like other public agencies, they can protect their boundaries by:
a. invoking their bureaucratic power in both the formal and informal political
systems, or
b. by conforming, or appearing to conform, to environmental demands or
expectations through symbols and rhetoric.
B. Influencing input
1. Legislators ask for input from agency heads.
3. Agencies influence the open political system by gathering support from public
groups.
5. An increase in public confidence in community based sentences can promote
additional sentences involving community supervision instead of incarceration.
C. Using symbols
1. Goal statements of an agency making appear that the agency is conforming to
the public’s needs.
3. Programs such as “AMBER” alerts are often symbolic of legislature’s efforts to
appease public demands for solutions to criminal justice issues.
D. Responding to client demand
1. Agencies go beyond or ignore goals to meet clients’ needs.
3. Organizations try to control staff through procedures but it is difficult.
4. Operational boundaries of criminal justice agencies are permeable.
E. Decreasing vulnerability to pressure
1. Agencies with limited resources and function in turbulent environments are
forced to adapt or fail.
2. Agencies must be open to interaction with the community.
VIII. Implications for Administrators
A. Administrator must protect the agency against improper environmental intrusions.
B. The Administrator must be in tune with the environment and changes.
2. They should resist idea that they work in a closed system.
3. The administrator bears the responsibility for the agency’s relationships with
its environment.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Throughout this chapter we have examined the interdependence of the criminal justice
system and its environment. In effect, all organizations function in the general environmental
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criminal justice system. Finally, criminal justice organizations function within a specific
environment that includes clients, related agencies, and other systems that make immediate
demands. Environments may be static (stable and predictable) or dynamic (turbulent and
unpredictable). Regardless, the organization, and specifically its administrators, must be in tune
with changing environmental conditions. Administrators have a duty to be responsive to
legitimate demands and changing constraints while protecting the organization from capricious,
inappropriate demands. Ultimately, an agency will be evaluated on its ability to negotiate its
interdependence with its environment.
The ability of a criminal justice agency to negotiate with environmental forces depends
on the ability of the agency and its members to communicate effectively with external groups.
Agency field workers and agency executives work with different environmental forces and
expectations and have different understandings of the agency’s mandate and appropriate
activities of its members. Agency executives must manage environmental inputs with
symbolism. Agencies often put forward the least costly change to meet the demands from the
environment. Chapter 4 examines the problems of communication in criminal justice
REVIEW QUESTIONS
2. In your opinion, to what extent has the ‘‘war on terror’’ impacted local law enforcement
practices? What is your reasoning?
3. Identify the economic/political forces that limit the ability of federal agencies to enforce
immigration laws.
5. Explain how legislator’s personal views on criminal justice issues can frame legislative
outcomes. Use the criminal sentencing structure as an example.
DISCUSSION TOPICS/STUDENT ACTIVITIES
1. Form the students into four groups. Give the groups 30 minutes to analyze the case study
2. Have the students identify examples of overlapping sub-groups in criminal justice
3. Have the students discuss how work processors become “street–level bureaucrats”
4. Have the students examine the United States Sentencing Guidelines for Cocaine and
5. Divide the students into two groups and have them, separately, prepare a list of five (5)
symbolic programs in criminal justice. Have the students join back together as a class and
compare and contrast those lists. Discuss the merits of such symbolic programs.
INTERNET CONNECTIONS
1. Review the updated flowchart of the events in the criminal justice system on the Bureau
of Justice Statistics web site at http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/largechart.cfm
3. Access the ‘Lectric Law Library Lawcopedia’s criminal justice system topic area to view
4. Read about the effects politics had on an Illinois Department of Corrections program
5. Visit the National Criminal Justice Center web site for an in-depth report on how courts