Community policing and community adjudication: Toward a theory of organizational co-evolution in criminal justice administration.

摘要

This study examines how and why police agencies that engage in community policing strategies interact with judicial agencies that utilize community adjudication, including restorative justice, community courts, community prosecution, and similar tactics. This study investigates the interaction between community policing and community adjudication to determine organizational and intergovernmental strategies that permit both types of agencies to achieve common goals in a way that is responsive to the communities they serve.; This study used five geographic locations as study sites: Boulder, Colorado; Portland, Oregon, Santa Clara, California; Woodbury, Minnesota, and the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. As this was a qualitative research effort, data were primarily collected through extensive interviews and observation.; The findings of this study suggest that there are multiple phenomena that simultaneously occur. Borrowing the concept of ecological co-evolution from the natural sciences and interagency cooperation from the discipline of public administration, a new understanding of criminal justice administration emerged---organizational co-evolution. Therefore, the overarching finding of this study is that as community policing agencies and courts using community adjudication strategies interact with one another, each organization is changed in what appears to be a mutually beneficial way.; One of the results of this interaction is the emergence of a dual-path system of criminal justice administration that is informal, though complimentary, to the traditional justice system. Beyond this, it was discovered that this dual-path system of criminal justice seems to work best when there is little or no formal policy that guides the process. This, as believed by the practitioners who participated in this study, assures flexibility and responsiveness in decision-making based on the individual circumstances associated with each criminal episode.; To accommodate the need to manage each crime in an individual manner, and at the same time be attentive to community member needs, each of the agencies in this study developed informal and reciprocal personal relationships within and between each type of agency---police and court. The result is a flexible justice system that seems, under certain circumstances, to improve service to crime victims, community members, and offenders.