NCJ Number
182939
Journal
Corrections Management Quarterly Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Dated: Spring 2000 Pages: 34-40
Date Published
2000
Length
7 pages
Annotation
The Community Probation-Community Police Team (CP-CPT), which was developed by the author in concert with Herbert J. Hoelter, empowers officers with new skills, tasks, and attitudes, which creates a challenge for supervisors and managers in "top-down" hierarchical organizations.
Abstract
CP-CPT provides new opportunities for partnerships between probation/parole, police, and community advocates and leaders. Yet a substantial commitment to organizational retooling is required. Comprehensive training for officers and managers is the essential ingredient for mastering new skills. Experience suggests that both probation/parole and police officers relish the opportunity to be empowered. The CP-CPT process is not a program held together by a few new policies and procedures. It is a refined process that fundamentally changes how the problems of local crime and the problems presented by at-risk offenders are addressed. Training is directly associated with team success. It includes organizational development and change theory, high-performance team building theory and practice, the interventions of structured family therapy, substance abuse relapse prevention, community asset mapping, and contemporary field safety practices. For some supervisors and managers, developing comfort with cross-agency matrix management is a challenge. Because the CP-CPT process by definition is a cross-agency endeavor, hierarchical "top-down" management must yield to a more cooperative matrix management model in which leadership emerges on teams (rather than being appointed) and most decisions are made by consensus. Managers who have accommodated their management styles to the CP-CPT process have come to view their roles as those of coaches, facilitators, and problem solvers. 15 suggested readings