Political Science

Organizational behavior refers to the study of individuals behavior in an organization. It involves understanding group behavior, individuals, interpersonal processes, and organization dynamics (Schermerhorn, Hunt,  Osborn, 2005). Organizational behavior is present in various professions, organizations and companies have the aim of achieving organizational goals, improving productivity, promoting learning and development. Criminal justice refers to a structure of practices and government institutions which is directed towards enhancing social control, mitigating and deterring crime and sanctioning the people involved in violation of the law through criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts. On the other hand, a criminal justice agency is an agency that is mainly involved in the enforcement of law at different levels in the process for any person alleged to commit to a criminal offence. The process starts from the initial contact with the police, pre-trial, court proceedings, sentencing and finally correction involved. (Vanessa cross, 2009).

Elements of organizational behavior include people, structure, technology and social systems. To begin with, the central social system of an agency is made up of people who consist of individuals from diverse backgrounds. The groups can be informal or formal, small or large, unofficial or official having the same goal and mission. Effectiveness of people as an element of organizational behavior is exemplified in the formation of a unit of elite by the (Federal Bureau of Investigation) FBI in 1984 .The unit was aimed at assisting to combat problems which were anticipated to arise during the summer Olympics such as terrorism. The team came up as result of the incidence of murder of Israelite athletes in the summer Olympics of the 1972 hosted by Germany. The units formed led to successful completion of the Olympics because all measures had been taken to curb against terrorism attacks.

 In 1997 after the incidence of Abner Louima, the budget of the Civilian Complaint Review Board in New York City (NYC) increased steadily. This resulted to the agency hiring more experienced managers and investigators who did the investigations. In essence, this has improved the performance of the agency which has had thousands of investigations to various complains and this has promoted discipline among very many policy officers. Structure is an element of organizational behavior referring to the use of people and the existing formal relationship in an agency. It is very effective because in a CJA, people are allocated various roles which are related to others (Masud, 2008). Those individuals must relate in various ways in order to have a well coordinated work environment. Therefore, a good structure is very vital especially with regard to crime reporting. Reporting of crimes in good time is essential to all CJA because it is the initial stage in understanding crime. In the city of New York, the crime reports are organized in a way that various departments of the police together with the prosecutions are able to assess  whether crime is down or up in regions, counties  or their jurisdiction areas (Division of Crime Justice Services,2009).

The DCJS (Division of Crime Justice Services) collects, compiles and submits arrest and crime reports in over five hundred police departments in NYS (New York State) and the office of Sheriffs to the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the official statistics for New Yorks crime (DCJS 2009).The reports links victim information and offender, specific crimes to specific arrests, it also sums up all the crimes per incident alongside providing important details such as weapons used. This gives the agency a clue on how to deal with the criminals. 

The Department of Justice in the United States consists of a section on public integrity which oversees the efforts of the federal to deal with corruption inform of prosecution of appointed and elected  public officials across the government structure (United States Department Of Criminal Justice)

Technology imparts both economic and physical conditions in which individuals work (Taxman, F., E. Shepherdstown and J. Byrne. 2004). In the United States various states have urged the officials of the community correctional units to make use of the monitoring technologies so that it gives room for early release of the criminals from prison or jail which is a way of dealing with the deteriorating state budgets. It is also noted that the skills and technological innovations of laboratory analysts in FBI laboratories led to the successful arrest and prosecution of those involved in the bombing of the World trade center, Oklahoma City in 1995 and Unabomber in 1996.Thus technology is very effective in CJA.

Social system is another element that provides external environment in which an agency works. The eJusticeNY is a social system which is a browser-based application designed to provide users from accredited agencies a central access point to the information that is computerized in the NYS.  It embodies the idea of integrated and coordinated information systems on criminal justice for NYS .The system is a very secure thus a qualified user can obtain defendants recent status information at any time when key decisions are to be made on the criminal case proceedings. This is crucial in cases where a defendant in criminal cases is being arraigned initially. A judge has to decide on the release of the individual to the society or the person detained so that he she can make court appearances subsequently during court proceedings. The ability of the court to use this system to get the latest information on the status of an individual in NYS on whether the person  is required to go through another jurisdiction in a very secure and simple inquiry using a personal computer in an office guarantees sound decisions ,as well as safety of the public interests. This is a very effective element because one can get the NYS on criminal justice like mugshots, search for NYS missing or wanted individuals data files, ask for out of state-of information on criminal history, get crime data trends for counties within and outside NYC in time, access the NYS systems of crime mapping, update and review of those on probation, and query NYS for sex offenders.