Police Administration Structures in America Essay

Police Administration Structures in America - Essay Example The principle divergence is in the professional ethos. The early reformers had rallied around the military analogy of conducting a "war on crime." Adoption of the new model of administration structure is viewed as a means of improving the image of police officers and carried with it the more "modest" aim of controlling or preventing rather than defeating crime. The police administration structure is old fashioned based on bureaucratic principles and norms. The pervasive effect of task complexity on structure is highlighted by Newborn (2003). The task is viewed as so complex and variable as to require highly skilled professionals who are able to exercise discretion and interact in a collegial manner and collaborate on solutions. The administration structure that prescribe is spatially differentiated to allow informed neighborhood-level problem identification, and hierarchically undifferentiated to facilitate collegial, participative staff interaction, and has little or no structural specialization (either occupational or functional) in police operations so as to further encourage professional responsibility (Riener, 2000). Span of control, for example, ranges from wide to narrow; number of levels of authority ranges from few to many; degree of centralization in decision-making from low to high; and so on, depending on where the organization is on the organic-mechanistic continuum (Newborn, 2003). These organizational structures are more or less appropriate, depending on the nature of the task and the nature of the community. Mechanistic organizations are better suited to routine tasks performed in stable environments, and that organic organizations are more appropriate when the tasks are less routine and the environments less stable (Riener, 2000). First is the view that the bureaucratic model is presently the dominant form or that police administration organizations tend to be too far out on the bureaucratic end of the continuum.

Critical abstracts Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Critical abstracts - Essay Example In addition, Gabriel, Johnson and Stanton through empirical analysis found out that, ethnicity had no adverse influence on card values from 1984 to 1990 (Gabriel, Johnson & Stanton 215). 5. Authors through this article have managed to clear speculations or doubts commonly held by the public regarding the influence of ethnicity on card values and inequity, which they thought existed between 1984 and 1990. This is via contacting successful empirical analysis of the then rookie cards data for both pitchers and hitters (Gabriel, Johnson & Stanton 228). 6. However, this study’s results contrast with both 1990 and 1991 analyses; contacted by other experts whose conclusions exhibited adverse influence of ethnicity on card values besides resulting to other discrepancies (Gabriel, Johnson & Stanton 228). This is because Gabriel, Johnson and Stanton contacted analysis of rookie card prices for the active players only and excluded the retired members. Therefore, they ought to have included both age groups, which would give reliable information devoid of contrasting