Administrator Challenges, Essay Example

One of the major present-day challenges for criminal justice administrators is the need to keep up with policy changes. This mainly affects police administration because when these changes occur they are the ones responsible for finding ways to implement these policy changes into their daily law enforcement work. Local police are responsible for applying the changes made by the state government and federal government while federal police are responsible for dealing with issues that occur across states and countries. Regardless of which agencies are affected by these policy changes, it is essential for the police to respond quickly and in an organized manner to ensure that they are able to train their staff to handle new laws and requirements.

A major policy change occurred across the board after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011, which forced us to rethink the ways we keep our citizens secure. Terrorism is a national threat and occurs across many cities and states. To ensure that people remain safe in large cities, police officers are now responsible for randomly searching bags in areas where many people travel and advocating the need for reporting suspicious items (Clarke & Newman, 2007). In addition, events where many people will be present, such as parades, now require a greater amount of police to be present in order to ensure public safety. The recent terrorist attack at the Boston marathon has shown that the need to increase security at public event continues twelve years after the 9-11 attacks (Mitchell, 2013). Police across the world responded to this threat by both increasing security and looking more seriously into information about potential terrorist attacks.

Although the implementation of policy changes are absolutely necessary because they are government mandates, it is sometimes difficult to reallocate large amounts of officers to a specific area when they are needed to patrol elsewhere and provide them with necessary training if their normal job functions fall within another expertise. Therefore, it is necessary for police departments across the country and the world to develop a plan that will quickly address this situation. The most effective ways to do this would be to analyze the areas where safety officers regularly patrol. Based on the safety of the neighborhoods overall and amount of police officers on the patrol, the police administration can develop a way to recruit police officers to events for public safety purposes while continuing to assure the safety of other residents. In addition, police officers should be specifically trained to respond to emergency situations that involve terrorist attacks even if their normal job function is traffic patrol. The more officers that a police administration has available during the time of a crises, the more efficient they will be in helping those affecting and catching the people responsible for the crime.

This course has helped prepare me to understand the present-day challenges that occur in criminal justice administration. I now know how to think more critically about the issues that influence changes the police, courts, and corrections and apply this information to regulation of these administrations. In addition, I have learned how to conduct research related to these issues more effectively. This course has provided me with many scenarios that I didn’t even realize were issues in the criminal justice field and now I will be able to understand how all the branches of the government are related and how one influences the other. In addition, the readings that I have conducted while taking this course have provided me with a wealth of background information on the subject that I believe will be useful to me in the future.

References

Clarke RV, Newman GR. (2007). Police and the Prevention of Terrorism. Policing. Retrieved from http://intl-policing.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/1/9.full

Mitchell, D. (2013). Colfax Marathon In Denver To Have Tight Security Post-Boston Marathon Bombings. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/colfax-marathon-in-denver_n_3298690.html