Guidelines For Developing A Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee

This document provides guidelines for establishing a local criminal justice coordinating committee (CJCC). It describes CJCCs and provides specific guidance for their development and operation. The guide will help appointed and elected officials of general government and executives of local justice systems from jurisdictions of all sizes create or strengthen local CJCCs. It should be of particular interest to citizens and public officials who sense that more collaborative, better coordinated decisionmaking processes can improve the local criminal justice system significantly.

Guidelines for Staffing a Local Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee describes the staffing functions of a CJCC and provides specific guidance for obtaining and improving a jurisdiction's criminal justice planning operation.

This guide was developed to assist students, professors, executives of local criminal justice systems, and appointed and elected officials of general government to have a better understanding on how the criminal justice system should function. It may also be of special interest to citizens and public officials who sense that more collaboration and coordination is needed to enhance criminal justice decision making which, in turn, will have a positive impact on local criminal justice systems. Leslie J. Smith advocates that the performance of the criminal justice system should be measured in terms of achieving the goals and objectives of each component collectively. Although the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the U.S. government are constitutionally independent and not required to engage in any coordinated planning activities, these requirements should not lead to poor performance. It is essential to promote positive government through increased collaboration by identifying philosophical principles that will promote the participation of citizens, law enforcement, judiciary, prosecution, corrections, victims, treatment providers, and educators in the development of strategies to prevent, reduce and control crime. There are approximately twenty states throughout the United States that have fostered criminal justice collaborations of this type. The key to accomplishing this objective is effective leadership. This approach is growing in popularity and this book will assist in the further development of this strategy. This guide provides a step-by-step strategy that simplifies the aforementioned issues. It will be especially advantageous for newly appointed criminal coordinators, planners, and others that are charged with creating a hands-on approach to coordinating their local criminal justice processes. Above all, as criminal justice presses forward to the future, the guide will assist in "bridging the gap" between traditional and contemporary approaches to criminal justice plann

This manual contains the standards for reform in the management and operation of the criminal justice system, focusing on planning, education, and information systems. Planning for resource allocation is one of the most important functions that a criminal justice agency performs. The 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act required the creation of state criminal justice planning agencies and the development of annual state comprehensive plans as a contingency for state participation in federal criminal justice funding. In the initial section of this volume, the National Advisory Commission points out the need for additional planning at the metropolitan and regional levels, and indicates the necessity for quantifying performance objectives. It also stresses participation in the planning process by criminal justice agencies, government departments and private citizens. The Commission recommends the development of state integrated multiyear planning and the establishment of criminal justice coordinating councils by all major cities and counties. Other areas of concern to the Commission, in addition to management and budget planning, include systems analysis, information systems, evaluation, personnel training, and criminal code revision. These and other commission proposals appear in the form of specific standards and recommendations -- nearly 70 in all -- that spell out in detail what the segments of the criminal justice system-the police, courts, and correctional agencies can do to upgrade and modernize many of their functions. This manual is a reference work for the practitioner as well as the interested layman.

Intended for federal, state, and local policymakers in the area of criminal justice research and development, this report includes guidelines for improvement of the quality, relevance, and utilization of research results. In order to cover these issues, part two of this report focuses respectively on the needs of research and development policymakers who fund criminal justice research and development, researchers who conduct research and development, and practitioners who put research and development results into use. Guidelines and principles are proposed which should assist policymakers at all levels of government. However, some topics tend to be addressed more to the federal level, where major research and development decisions are often made. The first chapter of this part presents a detailed discussion of institutional support for criminal justice research and development. It describes the federal role in supporting this effort, focusing on who the agencies are, the extent of their involvement, and how the principal agencies are organized to manage their research and development programs. Recommendations regarding the research and development management activities of criminal justice funding agencies are included. Several important issues in the conduct of criminal justice research and development are examined in the second chapter. Among the topics discussed are constraints on research, ethical issues, research designs and methodologies, prerequisites for sound planning and project selection, ways of maintaining the confidentiality of data, and ways of making data more easily available for research and statistical purposes. The final chapter of this section discusses research and development utilization practices and the assumptions underlying current policies in this area. A criticism of these policies and recommendations for new strategies is presented. The final part of this report provides an analysis of the kinds of problems often encountered in research and development. Three general types of criminal justice research and development are discussed: technology (e.g., hardware) research, research on problems of criminal justice organizations (e.g., arrest, prosecution, sentencing, and parole), and research on new criminal justice problems. For each type of research and development, the relevant issues and recommendations are discussed. Most of these, however, still related to either the support or conduct of research and development. The report also attempts to provide concrete illustrative examples by raising the relevant issues in the context of crime prevention at commercial and residential sites (technology research), sentencing (research on problems of criminal justice organizations), and problems of the victim (research on new criminal justice problems).