Two Models of the Criminal Justice System: An Organizational Perspective

Despite the scholarly and popular interest in the administration of criminal justice, there are few theoretical discussions of the process. Consequently, this paper is an attempt to develop an explicit theoretical framework by which the practices in the administration can be depicted and explained. In it I characterize the criminal justice system in terms of the theory of large-scale organizations, and then examine some of the tasks of administration in terms of established concepts and criteria supplied by this perspective. Following Etzioni, by organization I mean “social units devoted primarily to the attainment of specific goals” (1961). In this case the formal task of the criminal justice system is to process arrests, determine guilt or innocence, and in the case of guilt to specify an appropriate sanction. The major actors in the organization include the defendant, prosecutor, defense counsel, judge, arresting officer, court clerk, and to varying degrees, other persons such as witnesses, additional policemen, clerks, parole officers, court psychiatrists and social workers, and the defendants' families and friends. A system of the administration of justice, whether it is adversarial or inquisitorial, entails the key elements of organization: institutionalized interaction of a large number of actors whose roles are highly defined, who are required to follow highly defined rules and who share a responsibility in a common goal — that of processing arrests.