Criminal Justice Organizations: Administration and Management

Criminal Justice Organizations: Administration and Management Chapter Nine Occupational Socialization Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Learning Objectives • Understand occupational socialization • Understand the basic precepts of organizational culture • Understand the socialization process as it applies to criminal justice agencies • Be able to discuss the problems in the socialization process in criminal justice agencies • Understand the basic strategies for socialization Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Occupational Socialization 250 • The process by which a person acquires the values, attitudes, and behaviors of an ongoing occupational social system. • It is a continuous process and may result in both legal and illegal behaviors. • Habitual behaviors, both good or bad, persist as long as the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, habits and expectations of the members remain supportive of them. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Occupational Socialization 250 • Habitual behavior, commonly called routines, is behavior that is regularly repeated and tends to occur subconsciously. • Habitual behavior is learned behavior that becomes so automatic that the person exhibiting the behavior isn't aware she is doing it. • It is often used to create order or structure in everyday life. • While most habitual behaviors, such as drinking your morning cup of coffee, are harmless, negative habitual behaviors, such as smoking, can be detrimental to physical and mental health. • Organizations are best understood as systems of roles. These roles link the individual to the organization and assure its continuity. (Katz and Kahn, 1978) Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Organizational Culture 251 • A set of assumptions, values, and beliefs shared by members of an organization. • These create language, symbols, folklore, and direct the behaviors of the organizational members. • Organizational cultures are invented, discovered, or developed by groups in order to cope with external influences and internal change. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Organizational Culture • Dominant values espoused by an organization such as rehabilitation, crime prevention, the philosophy of the organization toward employees or clients, rules of the game for getting along in the organization’s social system and the feeling or climate created in an organization are the ways employees are managed or interact. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Organizational CultureKey Terms 251 • Culture – complex whole of society and includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs and other capabilities and routines • Values – desirable goals • Norms – specify what people should do • Folkways – standard ways of doing things • Mores – strong views of right and wrong • Laws – codified mores Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Organizational CultureKey Terms 251 • Social control – the process of perpetuating conformity to the culture • Sanctions – rewards and punishments for conformity. • Formal sanctions are abstract and stem from impersonal sources. • Informal sanctions, such as peer pressure, can be personal and evoked by sources valued by an individual receiving sanction Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Organizational Culture 252 • Subcultures generally exist within a culture. These are groups that have their own beliefs and norms while sharing the values of the dominant culture. • Countercultures, groups, whose shared values differ substantially from those of the dominant culture. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Organizational Culture 252 • The pivotal question for an organization is: • How is the culture formed? • What forces are critical in forming the culture? • How the cultural arrangements impact the organizational goals? • How and to what extent administrators can influence the cultural arrangement of their agency? Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Organizational Culture 252 • The process of socialization in an organization serves to impose the organization’s patterns of basic assumptions upon its new members. • Understanding an organization’s culture and its socialization process, especially in a large or complex organization, is a difficult task. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Organizational Culture 253 • Each component of the criminal justice system creates its own culture and subculture. • Judiciary • Judges • Staff and line • Corrections • Administration • Managers • Line personnel • Police • Administration • Managers • Patrol units • Detective units Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Socialization Process 258 • Socialization is a process. • A model of socialization, must deal not only with the substantive (real or actual) dimension of the roles, but also with change over time and the nature of the influences producing change. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Stages of Socialization 259 • The socialization process is both formal and informal. • Stages • Anticipatory – prior to employment prospective employees adhere to certain behavioral standards . • Formal – occurs through formal training and active supervision • Informal– occurs though interaction with “significant other” peers, managers and even clients Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Socialization Process 259 • Anticipatory Stage: • This stage begins even before the individual joins the organization. • Individuals begin to adopt the attitudes and values they believe are consistent with the occupation, and they come to view themselves as members of the group. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Socialization Process 259 • During the anticipatory socialization stage, individuals are influenced by two main reference groups: • Those tangential (nonessential) to the occupation, such as family and friends. • Members of the occupation itself, such as lawyers, judges. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Socialization Process 260 • Formal Phase: • This is generally a period of formalized training such as pre-service training academies. • The academy provides normative prescriptions for the attitudes and behaviors of the recruits. • The academies provide a sense of belonging for the new recruit. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Socialization Process 260 • Informal Stage: In this stage the relevant reference groups are: • peers, managers, and even clients to whom a worker is exposed on a daily basis. • Here, the routine of the job shapes the role of the criminal justice worker. • Informal socialization is essentially a process that molds individuals to the organization culture. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

A Model of Influences 261 • A model of influences (Katz and Kahn, 1978) explains how socializing influences affect the individual. • Role expectations – standards of behavior by which an individual is judged. • Sent role – communication of expectations to the member. • Received role – the individual’s perception and understanding of the sent role. • Role behavior – the individual’s response to the complex information received Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

The Socialization Process Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Problems in the Socialization Process 265 • Most socialization problems are related to role conflict. • Compliance with one role expectation results in a lack of compliance to another. • Role conflict results in low job satisfaction, poor performance, and role stress. • In extreme cases corruption and official deviance can occur. • Behavior that is illegal but encouraged by the organization’s culture, i.e., bribes, being on the take etc. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Corruption and the Knapp Commission • The most detailed account of organized corruption available is the report of the Knapp commission. • This commission was created in May of 1970 by John V. Lindspay Mayor of New York City to investigate corruption within the New York City Police Department. • Using information obtained from police officers, such as Frank Serpico, as well as traditional investigative techniques, this extensive investigation and subsequent report uncovered a massive system of payoffs to officers in virtually every part of the organization. Chapter 7 - Policing

Problems in the Socialization Process • Covers a wide range of activities from violations of department rules to criminal activity • Knapp Commission 1972: • Meat eaters: officers who actively seek out graft and money • Grass eaters: one who participates in lesser forms of corruption, such as accepting free meals, discounts on services, gifts of money that may come their way. CJFS 4870 - Chapter 10 Administrative/Staff Functions

“Blue-coat code” • Corruption defined as: "A police officer is corrupt when he or she is acting under his or her official capacity and receives a benefit or something of value for doing something or from refraining from doing something." Chapter 7 - Policing

Corruption • “Blue-coat code” • Mooching, bribery, chiseling, extortion, shopping, shakedown, premeditated theft, favoritism, perjury, prejudice Chapter 7 - Policing

Terminology that identified forms of corrupt behavior • The Pad:This term referred to weekly, biweekly, or monthly payments to the police. • The payments were usually picked up by a police officer, known as the bagman, who then divided the money among fellow officers. People who made the payments and officers who received the payments were referred to as being "on the pad.” • The purpose of the pad was to maintain a steady payoff for police protection or at least for the police not to be around when the protected criminal activity was taking place. Chapter 7 - Policing

Terminology that identified forms of corrupt behavior • The Score: This was a one-time payment that an officer might solicit from a person caught in an illegal situation. A small score might be obtained from a motorist caught speeding or running a stop sign while larger scores might include drug dealers, gamblers, or pimps. • Meat-eaters:This term referred to individual officers who were "on the take." • These were the most aggressive of the corrupt officers. This group also represented a minority of officers. • These people spent a good portion of their working day actively seeking out situations they could exploit for financial gain. Chapter 7 - Policing

Activities under the blue-coat code • Mooching: receiving free coffee, cigarettes, meals, liquor, groceries, or other items either as a consequence of being in an underpaid, under compensated profession, or for possible future acts that might be received by the donor. • Chiseling:activities involving demands for free admission to entertainment, whether connected to police duty or not, such as price discounts. • Favoritism: the practice of using license tabs, window stickers, or courtesy cards to gain immunity from traffic arrest or citation (sometimes extended to family members and friends). Chapter 7 - Policing

Activities under the blue-coat code • Prejudice:situations in which minority groups receive less than impartial, neutral, objective treatment; especially those who have less influence at city hall and are less likely to cause the officer discomfort. • Shopping:the practice of picking up small items, such as candy, gum, or cigarettes, at a store where the door has been left accidentally unlocked after business hours. • Extortion: demands made for advertisements in police magazines or purchase of tickets to police functions or "street courts," where minor traffic citations can be avoided by the payment of cash bail to the arresting officer with no receipt required. Chapter 7 - Policing

Activities under the blue-coat code • Bribery: payments of cash or "gifts" for past or future assistance to avoid prosecution; such reciprocity might be made in terms of being unable to make a positive identification of a criminal or being in the wrong place at a given time when a crimes is to occur, both of which might be excused as carelessness but no proof as to deliberate miscarriage of justice. • Shakedown: the practice of expropriating expensive items for personal use and attributing it to criminal activity when investigating a break-in, burglary, or an unlocked door. • Differs from shopping in the cost of the items and the ease by which former ownership of items can be determined if the officer is caught in the act of procurement. Chapter 7 - Policing

Activities under the blue-coat code • Perjury:the sanction of the "code" which demands that officers lie to provide an alibi for fellow officers apprehended in unlawful activity covered by the "code." Chapter 7 - Policing

Socialization and the Police 267 • No evidence that authoritarian or violence seeking individuals are attracted to police work. • Police officers are subjected to a rather intense socialization process. • Structural aspects that connect police officers • Police work is depersonalizing • Solidarity in the drive toward professionalism • The ambiguous nature of police work Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Socialization in Corrections 270 • Correctional employees are attracted to the profession because of its regular pay and job security. • Most new correctional employees know very little about the job. • Unlike police officers, correctional officers often delay formal training until after a few months of on the job training and informal socialization. • Informal socialization appears to be more influential than formal socialization. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Socialization and Community Expectations 273 • Community expectations affect the socialization process. • Within the context of community expectations: • Appropriate behaviors are rewarded with public recognition, and • Inappropriate behaviors are punished by public criticism. • Well trained and educated practitioners are more likely to meet community expectations. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Strategies for SocializationImplications for Administrators 276 • The socialization process can be influenced by effective and deliberate leadership. • Changing the culture begins with changing recruiting processes and selection criteria. • Formalizing the training process and distancing it from the actual work improve and objectify the socialization process. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Strategies for SocializationImplications for Administrators 276 • Collective socialization – training new members as a group (i.e. formal academy training) • Sequential socialization – trainees pass through discrete stages on the way to becoming a fully accepted member of the group (e.g. post training probationary periods) • Serial socialization – relies on experienced veterans to develop newcomers (e.g. field training officer programs • Divestiture strategies – attempt to strip away certain characteristics before an individual is allowed into the group (e.g. haircuts and special uniforms) Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Strategies for SocializationImplications for Administrators 276 • Socialization is more prevalent during the early, rather than later, stages of a career. • Manager must be aware of the socializing influences that continue to confront staff. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Ethical Considerations 277 • The formal socialization process is a mechanism for the organization to impose its dominant belief system and rules upon its members. • Subtle messages from the command staff are influential in either discouraging or encouraging unethical behaviors. • Autocratic management styles tend to drive wedges between employees and the organization which may result in various forms of unethical behavior. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Chapter Summary • Occupational socialization is a process by which a member of an organization acquires the values, attitudes, and behaviors of an ongoing occupational social system. • This process may include formal training and will include social interactions with work peers. • Organizational culture is a set of assumptions, values, and beliefs shared by members of an organization. • Organizational culture includes language, symbols, and folklore that direct the behavior of the organization’s members. • Anticipatory socialization is often based upon media, movies, and television program. It is often inaccurate. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Chapter Summary • Formal socialization is often weak and informal socialization is usually strong. • Criminal justice practitioners face role conflict, role ambiguity, conflicting expectations, and contradictory goals. Hence, the socialization process presents conflicting stimuli. • Managers continuously influence the socialization process. • Organizational socialization begins with recruiting and selection and is accomplished though the orientation and training processes. • Supervision provides a continuous impact on formal socialization. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Thinking Point and Question • You have just been elected Sheriff of the Boone County Sheriff’s Department. • Your initial review of the department indicates a very loosely managed and controlled organization. • Training is haphazard, supervision is nearly nonexistent, and deputies are allowed to come and go as they please. • The department recently lost a class action suit filed by a group of Hispanic inmates who were repeatedly physically assaulted by a group of ten jailers. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Thinking Point and Question • You have come to the conclusion that the Department’s subculture is corruption prone. • Using the information from this chapter develop a plan for addressing and changing the Department’s organizational culture so that it becomes more conducive to the standards of ethical policing practice. Chapter 9 - Occupational Socialization

Criminal Justice Organizations: Administration and Management