Technoeconomic Revolution: Reengineering Criminal Justice Organizations and Workplaces (From Visions for Change: Crime and Justice in the Twenty-First Century, Third Edition, P 322-330, 2002, Roslyn Muraskin and Albert R. Roberts, eds. -- See NCJ-192962)

• NCJ Number: 192972
• Author(s): Rosemary L. Gido Ph.D.
• Date Published: 2002
• Length: 9 pages
• Sale Source: Prentice Hall Publishing
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Issues for the criminal justice workplace of the future include attracting a high-quality workforce in the face of increased competition, affording opportunities to an increasingly diverse workforce, and embracing new organizational work models.

Abstract

The reshaping of the U.S. economy has appropriately been labeled a "technoeconomic revolution," comparable to the Industrial Revolution in terms of its impact on the definition of work, organization, and workers. The major forces driving this revolution include rapid technological change, particularly information technology; continued globalization of the U.S. economy; rapid economic growth in populous, export-oriented developing nations, particularly in Asia and Latin America; deregulation and economic liberalization of international trade markets; and the impact of the aging of nearly 83 million U.S. baby boomers. The most dramatic changes in the workplace are unfolding as information technology reframes the structure and content of work environments. Distributed workforces are becoming the norm, as electronic technology has made it possible to link workers and functions at various locations. The creation of higher paying, higher skill jobs in the private sector will make it more difficult to attract such talent to the traditional criminal justice work environment. The remaining worker pool will be largely semi-skilled and unskilled. Women, minorities, and immigrants represent a potential resource for recruitment to the criminal justice workplace. Women are now more likely than men to graduate from high school and complete college. The effects of the technoeconomic revolution on the criminal justice work environment of the future are directly related to current criminal justice management and personnel practices. It is clear that criminal justice agencies must address both organization structures and human resource policies that are resistant to internal and external change. These structural and cultural barriers are obstacles to the re-engineering of proactive human resource policies, flexible organizational models, and employee decision making, all essential elements for high-quality criminal justice workplaces in the future. 34 references