NCJ Number
85081
Date Published
1981
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This essay examines the relationship between ethical behavior and formal and informal reward structures in criminal justice organizations.
Abstract
Organizational activity generally has a dual orientation; orientation toward serving the client and orientation toward serving the organization itself so as to deal with the organization's survival, growth, maintenance, internal conflict, and threats from the environment. Criminal justice organizations tend to reward participants whose behavior focuses on organizational rather than client needs, such that ethical behavior toward the client (citizen, suspect, defendant, offender, inmate) is not seriously taught nor reinforced by the organizational reward structure. Further, criminal justice organizations tend to want employees to perform their duties to serve the efficiency more than the effectiveness of the organization. Although ethical behavior by an employee may help solve a client's problem and thus contribute to the organization's effectiveness in serving a given client, if it reduces the efficiency of the organization's resource allocation, it is discouraged. Also, organizations tend to promulgate ethics through absolute rules and standards accompanied by external sanctions and rewards, rather than through the cultivation of a normative climate that encourages the internalization of values by employees and the discretionary application of those values according to the variables of a given situation. The most profound ethical decisions must flow from the internalized, motivated values of employees who make reasoned judgments that serve both the service and organizational ideals of the agency in particular situations. Four references are listed.