Organizational Change In An Urban Police Department

This in-depth case study of a mid-sized police department captures the dynamics, struggles, and successes of police change, revealing the positive organizational and community outcomes that resulted from a persistent drive to reinvent public safety and community relationships. The police profession in the United States faces a legitimacy problem. It is critical that police are prepared to change constantly, be adaptive, and adopt openness to self-reflection and external comparison, moving beyond their comfort zone to overcome the inevitable cultural, structural, and political obstacles. Using previously unpublished longitudinal data examining a 25-year period, Bond-Fortier offers a rich account of the complexity of police management and change within one particular mid-sized city: Lowell, Massachusetts. The multidisciplinary lens applied provides crucial insights into how and why police organizations respond to a changing environment, set certain goals, and make decisions about how to achieve those goals. The book analyzes the community and organizational forces that stimulated change in the Lowell Police Department, describes the changes that enabled the department to achieve national model status, and builds a nexus between influencing forces, interdisciplinary theory, and the creation of an adaptive 21st-century police organization. Organizational Change in an Urban Police Department: Innovating to Reform is essential reading for academics and students in criminal justice, criminology, organizational studies, public administration, sociology, political science, and public policy programs, as well as government executives, crime policy analysts, and public- and private-sector managers and leaders engaged in professional development and leadership courses.

Michael Jenkins discusses his book in this video. After 40 years of research championing the police profession's move into the Community Problem-Solving era, there are police practitioners and scholars who argue that the police profession has entered a new, intelligence-led, anti-terrorism era. Police Leaders in the New Community Problem-Solving Era demonstrates that these innovations are simply ways of more finely applying the elements of a community problem-solving strategy within a technologically savvy, post-9/11, and economically downgraded United States. This book chronicles what are arguably some of the nation's most capable police executives as they assist in moving their police departments into this New Community Problem-Solving Era. Given unprecedented access to the Boston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Newark (NJ) police departments, the cases are built using observations of police activities, in-depth interviews, surveys, and archival reviews. The reader will see how, rather than moving into a distinct era, even the most progressive police executives within rather forward-thinking settings are still on the road to fully realizing the community-based, crime and disorder reduction, and quality-of-life enhancing function of the police. The authors illuminate the undeniable role that police executives can play in bringing their departments into the New Community Problem-Solving era and discuss the facilitators and inhibitors that will undoubtedly influence the police profession's move in this new era. Students of policing as well as practitioners from varied policing backgrounds will find this book relatable, easy to understand, and relevant to many areas of police research and practice. The authors maintain a Facebook page for their book, to have discussions, offer teaching tips, and connect to other related postings. To learn more go to: https://www.facebook.com/jenkinsdecarlopolicing "Engaging and accessible, another vital strength of Police Leaders in the New Community Problem-Solving Era is its appeal to varied audiences, from police managers to students, and from academic researchers to policymakers." -- Rosalyn Bocker Parks, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books

This Brief examines the role of Police Unions in law enforcement policy development. It provides an overview of the historical and political background of police labor unions, and takes a critical look at the shifting perception of labor unions from generally positive to somewhat negative, to compare this perception with their real impact. It examines the perceived role that unions play, whether positive, negative, or neutral in the development and advancement of contemporary law enforcement agencies and their respective policies. This work provides a multisite survey of police administrators’ views and opinions on police union impact on a variety of police functions including: delivery of services, prevention of crime and disorder, and interaction with the public. The results of this research provide a comprehensive look at ways to improve the ways police departments operate and how they improve and enhance legitimacy in their communities.It provides a context for the current state of the public sector labor relations environment. It will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, police science, and public policy.

William Walsh and Gennaro Vito have adapted the strategic management process to the police organizational world in this innovative new text, Police Leadership and Administration: A 21st-Century Approach. Focusing principally on the police executive, this book covers pioneering management techniques for leaders facing the challenges of today’s complex environment, providing the police practitioner instruction in planning, setting direction, developing strategy, assessing internal and external environments, creating learning organizations, and managing and evaluating the change process. It also tackles how to handle the political, economic, social, and technical considerations that differ from one community to the next. Police Leadership and Administration trains individuals to search for solutions, rather than relying on old formulas and scientific management principles. It shows how to tailor responses to the unique problems and issues that professionals are likely to face in the field of law enforcement, providing a foundation with which to adapt to an ever-changing criminal justice climate. This book is essential for forward-thinking police leadership courses in colleges and professional training programs.

Police Organization & Management is a text & reference, which presents tested principles & procedures in the organization & management of the police enterprise. This classic work describes the basic tenets of organization theory & applies them to the police setting. It describes the problems of integrating the individual into the organization, responding to change through community policing, motivation concerns, leadership & productivity. It covers such police functions as patrol, support services, traffic, investigation, information management, human resources & administrative concerns.

Criminal Justice Theory, Second Edition is the first and only text, edited by U.S. criminal justice educators, on the theoretical foundations of criminal justice, not criminological theory. This new edition includes entirely new chapters as well as revisions to all others, with an eye to accessibility and coherence for upper division undergraduate and beginning graduate students in the field.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the police role from within a broader philosophical context. Contending that the police are in the midst of an identity crisis that exacerbates unjustified law enforcement tactics, Luke William Hunt examines various major conceptions of the police—those seeing them as heroes, warriors, and guardians. The book looks at the police role considering the overarching societal goal of justice and seeks to present a synthetic theory that draws upon history, law, society, psychology, and philosophy. Each major conception of the police role is examined in light of how it affects the pursuit of justice, and how it may be contrary to seeking justice holistically and collectively. The book sets forth a conception of the police role that is consistent with the basic values of a constitutional democracy in the liberal tradition. Hunt’s intent is that clarifying the police role will likewise elucidate any constraints upon policing strategies, including algorithmic strategies such as predictive policing. This book is essential reading for thoughtful policing and legal scholars as well as those interested in political philosophy, political theory, psychology, and related areas. Now more than ever, the nature of the police role is a philosophical topic that is relevant not just to police officials and social scientists, but to everyone.