Management standards for criminal justice: why and what they are about?
The system of criminal justice is subject to basic principles of functioning of any system, and criminal justice institutions, to the principles of functioning of organizations. We often ask ourselves about the efficiency and coherence of the system: what actually affects the desynchronization and lack of efficiency of the system; where are the growth areas that streamline the processes, create connections and add integrity? To a large extent, they are in the existing management culture of institutions and the system as a whole. If the legislation (or, philosophically, the matter) has changed quite intensively recently, the organization of processes within the system remains largely old-school. Therefore, together with the practitioners from the system, we began to think about a tool that will offer different approaches to managers at different levels in the criminal justice system – the Management Standards.
Today, organizations play a leading role in society, in fact forming its internal structure. Organizations have different forms, purposes and directions – they can be enterprises, non-profit organizations, public authorities, associations of citizens or communities, international legal, economic, social institutions, police unions, research societies, etc.
However, despite this diversity, these organizations are associations of people, and therefore have common features and patterns in terms of how they exist. In management, there is an established theory about the life cycles of the organization. Conceptually, such life cycles assume that every organization is born, develops and declines. Crises take place at every stage of the organization’s life, and that’s totally natural. The ability to overcome these crises, to stay on the path of development and high efficiency, to rejuvenate, to return to the previous stages from the stages of decline, burnout and chronic inflexibility – all of these are necessary qualities for organizations striving to be successful in the long run.
In addition, most organizations operate in a competitive environment, which also requires them to constantly develop and improve. The winner in the competition is the one who acts prudently and effectively.
Criminal justice institutions are by default committed to being successful in the long run, as their success is directly linked to the well-being of society. However, unlike most organizations, criminal justice institutions do not operate in a competitive environment, which significantly weakens external incentives for their continued development. It is critical given the role and place of law enforcement agencies in society.
It should also be borne in mind that – unlike business organizations – criminal justice institutions, like most public authorities, do not cease their activities after reaching the last phase of the life cycle (business organization at this stage simply goes bankrupt, losing market share), and continue to exist with all the negative characteristics of this phase of the life cycle: bureaucratization of processes, inflexibility, rejection of changes in society, loss of motivation in staff, lack of strategic goals, ignoring customer interests, imbalances and over-inflated staff.
It is noteworthy that, despite the beliefs of society and sometimes the heads of criminal justice institutions, the signs of such decline are obvious to employees within the organization even more than to external stakeholders, and so by default skeptical observers.
It leads to a significant loss of efficiency and eventually, to frustration of a society that does not receive quality services from this system. As a rule, the changes in the activities of criminal justice institutions take place under the influence of society, take the form of reorganization, reboot and even liquidation of law enforcement agencies. The purpose of such reorganization or reboot is to force the institution back to a more efficient phase of the life cycle. However, it often takes place without deep immersion of reformers in an area that needs change. As a result, this approach often deepens the crisis, creates negative consequences for the organization, its employees and society as a whole – for example, through the devaluation of positive experience of experienced employees, raising the ‘new’ over the ‘best,’ etc.
To prevent crises that result in reorganization and reboot, criminal justice institutions, as well as business organizations, must use the concepts of continuous development, strive to improve their activities.
Currently, there is a wide range of world best practices and approaches that can be used as a basis for development of criminal justice institutions. For example, according to the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) framework, the criteria of excellence are: 1) leadership, 2) policy and strategy, 3) people, 4) partnership and resources, 5) processes, products and services, 6) customer results, 7) employee results, 8) society results, and 9) key performance results. McKinsey’s 7s organization framework includes the following elements: 1) strategy, 2) shared values, 3) staff, 4) structure, 5) system, 6) style, 7) skills.
There are many other concepts of organizational development, including frameworks that focus on constant adaptation of the organization to the environment in which it operates; frameworks aimed at continuous training of organization’s staff, resulting in a systematic qualitative change of the very organization; frameworks that emphasize the forecast of future values in society and early adaptation to them, etc.
With this being said, we can conclude that launching a system of strategic development management is critical for criminal justice institutions. Management efforts that take into account current trends and knowledge in the field of management should be focused primarily on developing mission of each law enforcement agency through the prism of its main objectives established by law. Based on the mission, the organization’s strategy should be developed with specific strategic goals, which should not be abstract, but meet the criteria of SMART goals – that is, be specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented and time-bound. Equally important for the management of criminal justice is the identification of ‘consumers’ and their needs, constant review of processes and procedures, continuous development of employees, introduction of corporate culture and values, enabling feedback in the management of criminal justice.
To find ways to bring management processes in law enforcement to modern organizational management practices, a team of legal practitioners has developed Management Standards in Criminal Justice. In our opinion, the standard model of management of the criminal justice institution should include the following elements:
- Targeted activities: the Standards are designed to ensure key element of management in the institution of criminal justice – the system of goal-setting, which results in defined goals, key priorities, performance indicators and an action plan.
- Development and support of human capacity: the Standards are designed to provide criminal justice with highly professional and motivated employees who are focused on achieving strategic goals and objectives.
- Regularity of internal processes: the Standards are designed to provide an integrated approach to the identification, algorithmizing and improvement of processes taking place in the organizations and between them.
- Efficiency and effectiveness management: the Standards combine two interrelated but relatively independent components: efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is about the relationship between the results of the organization and the resources allocated to their achievement. Effectiveness demonstrates the degree of achievement of strategic goals and expected results.
- Communication and partnership: the Standards are meant to streamline and make effective internal communication within the organization – both vertical (from managers to employees and vice versa) and horizontal (between peer employees and managers), and to maintain a balance between the presumption of innocence and right of the public be aware of the results of high-profile investigations, equal distance from politics and commitment to the principle of inevitability of punishment combined with ensuring the rule of law.
- Knowledge management of the organization: the Standards are designed to ensure the collection, systematization, analysis of knowledge gained during the implementation of the organization’s best practices and their use in the future to improve the organization’s efficiency.
- Data and information management: the Standards refer to the effective collection, processing, analysis and practical use of data sets that the organization deals with in its daily activities to more effectively achieve its goals.
In fact, the proposed Standards are a fairly universal tool. For example, they can serve as a leader’s desk book – a very practical tool for his/her daily work. On the other hand, the Standards can be the basis for training and retraining of managers. Finally, perhaps their main goal is to develop a holistic management culture of the institution, which is the basis of any successful organization in the long run.
We are already piloting some approaches of the Standards in Ukrainian institutions and during training programs with criminal justice practitioners. As a result of critical reflection on the Standards, they will be filled with specific tools and will be able to help the criminal justice system be holistic and efficient.
Full article from the authors’ team of Standards is available here.
