Bureaucratic And Bureaucracy In The Criminal Justice System

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It could be debated that contemporary sytems of criminal justice are overly bureaucratic and depersonalising to a certain extent. By this it is thought that criminal justice systems involving the police and prison service, Crown Prosecution Service , Probation and the courts are overly bureaucratic and depersonalising. Bureaucratic is the idea of “Relating to a system of government in which most of the important decisions are taken by state officials rather than by elected representatives” (Oxforddictionaries.com, 2015).This could be seen through the functions of criminal justice systems that are to manage crime and criminals under strict rules.However it could be equally argued that criminal justice systems are not bureaucratic as powers …show more content…

For instance the bureaucratic politics model is a notion that suggests that political members represent views based on there respected political ideology for. Andrew Heywood stated that “political actors simply hold views that are based on their own position and on the interests of the organisations in which they work” (Heywood, 2011,p. 132). This reasoning could also be implied to the systems of criminal justice which are based on these strict governmental and administrative procedures. The most apparent are courts and the stages of prosecution which can form a long and complex procedure. Governance has also broadened the crime agenda due to the responsibilisation and privatisation agenda which has arguably lead to the blurring of boundaries. For example private control and ownership of the probation service suggests that crime is a big issue and challenging to handle. Most importantly privatisation means a transfer of government ownership to privates sectors such as the probation and National Health Service. The government strategy of privatising is indeed stemmed from a neo- liberal economic system of governance alongside deregulation of financial markets and cutting public spending. This has resulted in similar functions within systems of criminal

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