Collaboration In Criminal Justice

“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

problems and create responsive solutions; and judges, court administrators, prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation and parole representatives, corrections personnel, victim advocates, law enforcement officers, and public and private treatment providers reach out to one another to form connections that will allow them to address difficult medical, social, economic, and behavioral problems that pose major threats to the safety and well–being of our people. (Policy, Collaborative Justice: What is Collaborative Justice?)
The successful execution of a collaborative justice approach frequently faces many challenges which include: the adversarial environment of the legal system; the struggle for scarce funds; the political burden faced by elected officials; the creation or existence of agencies that have overlapping responsibilities; and the creation or existence of agencies that have missions that are inconsistent. (Policy, Collaborative Justice: What is Collaborative Justice?)
The success of a collaborative team relies upon the need and willingness of each participant to commit themselves and their time to the process; to set aside separate agency agendas in pursuit of a shared and larger goal; and to recognize that collaborative justice is a long term process, requiring the establishment and maintenance of solid collaborative partnerships with other agencies and community participants. The long–term benefits of the collaborative method—including a shared possession of, accountability for, and accomplishment in solving justice system problems—will certainly make the investment meaningful. (Policy, Collaborative Justice: What is Collaborative Justice?)
A true collaboration between criminal justice departments requires more than simply engaging in networking activities. It also requires coordination: the exchange of information for mutual benefit and to attain a common goal and cooperation: the exchange of said information, changing of activities, and distributing of resources for mutual benefit and to achieve a common goal. Collaboration represents a proper and effective method to problem-solving whenever the preferred goal is beyond the reach of any single department. (Policy, Collaborative Justice: Why Collaborate in Criminal Justice?)
Generating collaborative efforts can be a puzzling struggle for a number of reasons.

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

Justice?)
As a result of these issues and the significant investment of time that building a collaboration involves, recognizing collaborative partners who are willing to commit to the difficult work of finding common ground can be hard. What will sway participants to initially engage in and endure these collaborative undertakings, nevertheless, will be the belief in a pursuit of a common and uplifting goal and the promise of achieving an ideal future that cannot be grasped without the efforts of everyone on the collaborative team. (Policy, Collaborative Justice: Why Collaborate in Criminal Justice?)
Participants are those who have the authority to influence the outcome of the problem at hand and have a validated investment in doing so. Preferably, teams are included the criminal justice agencies and community organizations that influence, or are influenced by, decisions that will be completed by the collaborative team. Teams should think critically about their relationship, and include persons with the authority to create change within their own agencies and organizations, or become “agents of change” within their communities. Representation by court community and criminal justice professionals is critical to the effectiveness of any criminal justice collaboration: judges, court administrators, prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation and parole representatives, corrections personnel, and law enforcement officers all play a part in the administration of justice, and bring valuable information, resources, and perspectives to a collaborative effort. (Policy, Collaborative Justice: Who Collaborates in Criminal Justice?)
In addition to criminal justice system actors, community and service providers should be active participants in the collaboration in order for it to successfully address the complex social, behavioral, and health issues that are linked indivisibly to the administration of criminal justice. Public and private treatment providers, victims’ rights organizations, and victim advocates all represent vital perspectives in an integrated and collaborative response to criminal justice problems. Federal, state, and local agencies providing housing resources, workforce training, educational assistance and veterans’ benefits should be considered when creating a collaborative team, as each can bring unique thoughts and resources to the solution of the identified problem. Community and faith-based partners can also bring different resources to the resolution of criminal justice issues, as well as a wealth of knowledge about the community. Representation by offenders, ex-offenders, or offender’s rights groups can also positively impact the success of collaborative team because of their unique perspectives. (Policy, Collaborative Justice: Who Collaborates in Criminal Justice?)
The the main goal of community corrections is to achieve public safety through reduced recidivism by successfully managing offenders within the community. To do so community corrections agencies must reach out to collaborative companions. As more complete approaches to supervising offenders are applied in the field, improved collaboration is required to provide the assistance and additional resources essential to encourage offender success. Community corrections professionals cannot feasibly, and should not expect to, address the multifaceted needs of offenders independently. Other professionals must be involved to deliver valuable information, resources, and perspectives that will aid the offender to succeed in the community. (Policy, Collaborative Justice: Collaboration and the Community Corrections Field)
Criminal justice collaborations can be, and have been, started in many ways. An increasing number of collaborative teams are formed as a necessary condition for federal or state funding. Others develop from informal partnerships among criminal justice systems agencies that, when effective, are gradually expanded to include all of the relevant participants. Still other teams arise from the determined efforts of one charming leader or through the leadership of a core of criminal justice system players. Regardless of the method of their foundation, effective collaboration teams have one thing in common: a commitment to the success of the collaboration demonstrated by shared resources, shared information, and a shared sense of obligation to pursing common goals. (Policy, Collaborative Justice: Who Collaborates in Criminal Justice?)
Commonplaces such as “two heads are better than one” are actually based in truth.

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

Administration)
While this generally agreed to, the translation of ideals into reality is a difficult task and has been left largely left to appellate courts. There are some legislative guidelines which forbid particular improper or unfair practices and in a number of jurisdictions court rules set some requirements of procedural fairness. But the basic order for fairness and decency rests in constitutional guarantees. Fairness and decency as tests of suitable criminal justice procedures are not completely independent of the precision of the process in separating the guilty from the innocent, but it is not always clear in each situation which concern is vital. (Perspectives of Administration)
Further problems rise in defining proper and fair techniques in less clear-cut situations. Some fairness issues are resolved on constitutional grounds, that is, that the injustice or indecency is so basic as to be an infringement of the individual’s constitutional rights. (Perspectives of Administration)
Change is an evitable, if not desirable, consequences of human interaction. As societies grow and prosper, there is a desire to replace old customs with new traditions. In the administration of criminal justice, the fact that we have no mutual goals—even though we think we want to control crime and protect basic rights--makes change a difficult process to engineer. The general public has been unwilling to involve itself in matter concerning to criminal justice and justice officials have been hesitant to involve citizens. The consequence has been that the many pushes and pulls, within and outside the system, have been insufficient bring about meaningful and effective change. (Introduction: Pressures for Change)
With one push or pull, the move toward integration of offenders into society, is a sound one, but it tends to neglect two significant problems. One is that there are too many laws on the records, many of which are unenforceable, and others which simply are not enforced, which increases the quantities of offenders in our society. Decriminalization is discussed frequently, but it has not taken hold as a viable means for reducing crime. Such crimes as sexual behavior between consenting adults, public drunkenness, and abortion are could be removed from the criminal codes, but there are many other areas of human activity that also need to be considered, such as drug addiction and gambling. (Introduction: Pressures for Change)
The second problem is that where there have been efforts to involve communities in policy improvement in this reintegration effort, or “community control.” There are many programs and efforts which attempted to involve the communities in dealing with its own problems, but all were degraded when citizens appeared to have established too much power and voice in their own fates. Of course, what must be protected is that citizens do not form vigilante groups, mobs, or other associations for grater pressure or control than now exists. But if, by working together criminal justice agencies, victims, communities, and offenders can bring about improved definitions of what crime is, and fair and just measures for bring about control over those crimes which are consensually agreed to be unacceptable, then the democratic society for which we have longed can possibly become a reality insofar as criminal justice is concerned. (Introduction: Pressures for Change)
Change means rebooting the system and designing new “coping mechanisms.” According to Epps there is one coping mechanism that would almost certainly improve the status quo, one that does not really entail changing any procedures at all: we should stop stating that it’s better for many guilty persons to go free to save one innocent from penalty and asserting that our system obeys with that command, doing so would be more honest. The constant claims that our system heavily tilts mistake in favor of clearing the guilty create the impression that false convictions are quite infrequent and that our bureaucratic system is rigorously fair to the innocent. Yet some false convictions are unavoidable no matter what we do. If the community though such mistakes were more common, they might be more anxious about severe treatment of the convicted. Regardless of how the system actually distributes mistakes, it may make sense to try to downplay the likelihood of guilty persons going free and to increase public perception of the possibility of false convictions. (Epps)
After a brief discussion Lexi, Kelsey and I agreed with what Epps suggests this mechanism may be the best way to start change in the system but we wonder how exactly it can be done. How do you put a mechanism like this into place? This mechanism in application may not be realistic because of human nature.
After change takes place and the system evolves into a network of distinct areas and skills the systems different areas must define and judge success according to how each define its job. What is often missing, as discussed before, is a focus on a vision for the entire criminal justice system as a whole. Once this vision is found a more successful collaboration can be achieved. (Thigpen, Solomon and Keiser)