Collaboration In Criminal Justice

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“Collaboration is the process of working together to achieve a common goal that is impossible to reach without the efforts of others.” Rather than trusting single agencies to solve their respective problems, it recognizes that many criminal justice problems are universal and require a coordinated and collaborative response to the most pressing issues facing our justice system today. Collaborative justice corporations—and the ability to share information, develop common goals, and create compatible internal policies to support those goals—have significant potential to positively impact crime, increase public confidence, and reduce costs throughout the justice system. Court community and criminal justice professionals join forces to analyze …show more content…

The American criminal justice system is built on the idea of separation of powers and adversarial arrangement, and consequently criminal justice agencies have not usually collaborated in order to solve common problem. In reality, agencies may not consider that they share collective problems --they may have conflicting missions and may see little, or too much, connection in their efforts. Furthermore, resources are often limited, and collaborative partners may find themselves competing for the same resources. As such, criminal justice and even public agencies may approach any determination to share information and resources with doubt or questions about motives. (Policy, Collaborative Justice: Why Collaborate in Criminal …show more content…

Working together, collaborative teams can accomplish a level of change and success that is far beyond the grasp of any lone agency. A collaborative team’s ability to analyze difficult problems from numerous perspectives, collect material from a host of significant sources, and bring joint resources to bear on the solution, makes it a definitely powerful tool in speaking to the multifaceted issues facing the criminal justice system. (Policy, Collaborative Justice: Who Collaborates in Criminal Justice?) Sufficiency of evidence, effectiveness in operation, and success in producing results are not, in themselves, adequate measures of a criminal justice system in a democratic society. Our political ideology demands that justice be viewed from the standpoint of fair dealing with suspects, defendants, and convinced criminals, and that methods of discovery, apprehension, processing, and treatment be suitable for our time and culture. There are, consequently, restrictions on the methods and techniques used to control crime; the end does not always rationalize the means. (Perspectives of

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