The Criminal Justice Leadership Program
Focus on strengthening the human potential of the criminal justice system is currently a cornerstone investment in Ukraine’s secure future. For this purpose, JustGroup initiated the Criminal Justice Leadership Program.
Prerequisites for Program design
Our community has been discussing the role of the manager in the system for several years. We thought about gathering representatives of various institutions in one space and thinking together on who is the manager; What is the scope of their influence in a complex context; How does overall efficiency of the system depend on the interaction of various elements? And eventually, we decided to design a unique the Criminal Justice Leadership Program.
To design the Program, we partnered up with organizations that have the best national expertise in this field – the Center for Leadership of the Ukrainian Catholic University, the Kyiv Mohyla Business School and the Mohyla Strategic Agency – and adapted it to the context of public administration and justice system. We are grateful to the International Renaissance Foundation for supporting the design and implementation of the Program.
“Organizational culture often prevents the nascence and stabilization of changes in the system. We have realized through dialogues and research in our environment, through long-term work with leaders, managers and teams in institutions. Managers as part of professional communities grow and strengthen intuitively. Internal dialogue between different elements in the system takes place through formats that often do not contribute to new ideas or solutions. We want to create pre-requisites for the development and support of leaders of the environment and institutions; to support dialogue within the environment. Therefore, the transformation of management culture is one of key focuses of our work,” JustGroup leader Vasylyna Yavorska says.
Participants
The goal of the Program is to create a community of managers from various institutions who, through personal development, will be able to promote changes in the management culture both at the level of institutions and at the level of the entire criminal justice system. We wanted to create a unique space where they could think together about important questions such as the role of the manager, leadership and system development with the help of the best management schools. And in this space, we managed to unite almost 30 representatives from various institutions, namely: the Prosecutor General’s Office and regional prosecutor’s offices, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Supreme Court, the High Anti-Corruption Court and the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. We are grateful to the participants for the courage to step on this path and complete it.
“The role of a manager in the criminal justice system is now extremely undervalued. When it comes to the very concept of leadership, the system almost does not have any. It is a common belief that management is an obvious thing, and every professional is quite capable of organizing the work of subordinates. And then it turns out that “the system lost a good professional and got a bad manager instead.” They start looking for a new one, and again and again. I am grateful to our permanent partner JustGroup for providing managers in the system with a unique opportunity to rethink their role, to understand that criminal justice professionals are humans, and therefore the entire modern toolkit of a manager and a leader is absolutely suitable for working with investigators, prosecutors and judges,” Program participant Yurii Bielousov, Head of the War Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office, notes.
How did it go?
The first session of the Program took place at the end of October 2023. The participants, together with Andrii Rozhdestvenskyi, CEO of the UCU Leadership Center, reflected on their understanding of leadership through the model of the leader’s virtues, as well as their role in implementing changes. They analyzed cases of change in national public institutions and the non-state sector, strategies, potential weaknesses and possible alternative steps.
“Since the onset of Russian aggression, and especially after the full-scale invasion of Russia of Ukraine, the system of criminal justice faced not only considerable challenges, but also opportunities. Restoration of public trust in the state’s ability to ensure justice and overcome the terrible consequences of war is the key. And the role of the criminal justice system is greater than just conducting effective investigations. I hope that the Program will help motivated managers both with practical tools and with thinking and understanding of their role and influence on the restoration of justice in the conditions of war. The society needs responsible and value-driven managers and teams in the criminal justice system more than ever,” Daria Svyrydova, lawyer, member of the Program design team.
During the second session which took place at the Kyiv Mohyla Business School in November, the participants jointly sought answers to questions such as: Which strategic idea does the system pursue; What value does the system generate; Who are the clients? The Dean of kmbs Oleksandr Savruk and his deputy Eduard Maltsev guided the participants to the understanding and rethinking of their experience and helped them dive deeper in the development of leaders’ skills for working with change management and teams in which these changes can germinate and be permanent.
“The component of management skills in the field of criminal justice is something that has long been an unconscious demand of society. We want criminal justice to become more effective, but for this, we are constantly trying to improve procedural legislation. In my opinion, promotion of the management culture is yet another solution, and not only in terms of procedural and substantive law. The manager should find a new way to organize a complete, comprehensive and impartial investigation of criminal proceedings in conditions of limited human and material resources. Leadership, optimization and priority setting, cost benefit approach in decision-making, implementation of changes, digital transformation, joining efforts of all actors of criminal justice around common ideas are what will make the profession better,” says Program participant Denys Hulmahomedov, Deputy Director of NABU.
During the third session of the Program, the participants reflected on what they could do to develop themselves as managers, as well as develop their teams, institutions and the system as a whole. These days were full of hard work, thinking, and discussions, inspired by Iryna Hlushchenkova, JustGroup consultant, trainer, facilitator, Nataliia Kadia, expert in organizational transformations and leadership, neuroleadership consultant, and Timur Demchuk, Head of Corporate Programs at kmbs, teacher of Future School.
“What percentage of the agents of change it takes to change the culture of the environment? The research data varies from 25 to 10%. These are foreign studies. I hope that soon we will have data to draw our conclusions about how best to set in motion the momentum to transform the management culture in the criminal justice system. For this, the program has important prerequisites – a unique institutional representation, a holistic design of a long-term comprehensive program, and a space for community and understanding, which is created through various formats,” Iryna Hlushchenkova stressed.
This session was the final within the main Program. However, JustGroup together with experts and partners will continue to provide follow up support to courageous participants who dare to make changes in their teams or institutions. There are also plans to develop a tool for evaluating leadership qualities together with the UCU Leadership Center, present the Management Standards in the criminal justice system, support and develop the community of managers in the system.
