NCJ Number
72379
Date Published
1980
Length
274 pages
Annotation
Based on practical and theoretical experiences in the United States and abroad, this monograph explores the relationships between criminal justice work and the community and proposes a community-oriented model for the administration of criminal justice.
Abstract
Although community approaches have been popular since the 1960's, few theorists have seriously considered what the term community means and exactly how law enforcement was to connect with communal phenomena to make justice work. Initially, two general concepts of community are described: the consensual community where sentimental bonds, common values, and shared experiences bind residents who have lived and worked with one another over a period of time, and the interactive community where individuals and organizations cooperate to achieve personal interests or provide needed services. Criminal justice policy in the consensual community is based on a crime control approach. This model is dedicated to protect society as it now exists and assumes that the laws being enforced enjoy universal moral support. Compulsion and manipulation characterize the control strategies directed against lawbreakers because criminals are assumed to be markedly different from noncriminals in personality, attitudes, and behavior and to require management from an outside force. The crime control bureaucracy exacts specific compliance from its staff and imposes standardized penalties on offenders. In contrast, the interactive control model views society as the dynamic creation of interactions among groups and individuals whose relationships must be reevaluated continually. This concept recognizes competitive power and the interplay of political interests upon criminal justice policy. The criminal justice administration is viewed as a specialized aspect of the total social control system wherein strivings for private interest are met through conformity to norms that make for societal order and for supportive participation of the members within societal units. In this context, all societal units must deliver to members the inducements necessary for community commitment and personal controls, thus working with deviants rather than against them. Bureaucracies must be flexible, and criminal justice agencies cannot be isolated from daily community concerns and activities. The concept of the interactive community is proposed as being superior to the consensual community in accepting the realities of urban relationships and is conceived as a mediating instrument between the resident's search for significance and the community services needed by an urbanite. Although the interactive community is admittedly difficult to implement, it does offer criminal justice policy makers the prospect of mobilizing communal phenomena to lend long-term significance to the work of justice agencies. (Author abstract modified)