Abstract
This issue of IJOTCC brings to light an issue that is often overlooked in criminal justice practice—quality. As several of the articles in this issue argue, quality of services, quality of data, and quality of life for those served by, and serving in, criminal justice are critically important, but oft neglected, issues.
Traditional approaches to criminal justice operations focus on achieving a goal of controlling crime. This goal may be realized by lowering the number of criminal acts in a community, bringing known offenders to justice, reducing recidivism, or gathering as much information/data as possible about a topic. And, as our means of assessing our achievement of such goals, we look to the efficiency and efficacy of our actions. If our agencies and practices can both be low-cost and effectively bring down instances of crime and reduce the likelihood of known offenders’ re-offending, then we presume we have done our job. But, have we really?
Simply guiding behavior and expenses to a desired goal may be a great way for agency administrators, and even politicians, to show that they are responsible and skilled at achieving a stated goal. But, what if that goal were to be expanded and include the provision of services and products that are of high quality? By high quality, I mean providing a well-rounded service or product that provides for a safer, smoother, lasting, and life-enhancing outcome.
Take for instance the article by Molleman and van Ginneken. What we find in their study is that sometimes the efficient and logically seemingly effective practice of housing inmates in two-person cells leads to a lower quality of life and reduced benefits from relationships with prison staff persons. Housing two people in a cell is certainly more efficient than single-cells. But, are the cost savings and purportedly more efficient use of staff time worth the trade-off? If inmates have a lower quality of life while incarcerated, what are the likely outcomes? Is it less recidivism, more positive behavioral change, and more drive to “do the right thing” after release? Or, is it more depression, alienation, anger, and acquiescence to a life of crime, and various negative influences? As Molleman and van Ginneken suggest, the answer is “cell sharing complicates the achievement of some central goals of imprisonment, for instance, the realization of humane conditions and safety.” Rather obviously, bureaucratic efforts to achieve some goals compromise the pursuit of what are arguably much larger and more important goals.
The same type of argument for quality can be seen in the final article of this issue as well. Here, Bierie puts forth a proposal for ways to improve the quality of the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Not only does Bierie’s proposal provide a guide for how to improve the quality of the data, but so too does it provide for a more useful means of using the collected data. The quality here is in the comprehensiveness of the data to be collected and practical uses that can come from the review and analysis of such data. The idea of quality also comes into play here when considering what will be done with the data once collected. At the core, the purpose of criminal justice data is to provide a means for practitioners, scholars, and researchers to better understand how, when, where, with whom, and why the system functions as it does and produces what it does. If we have higher quality data to review and analyze, we are much more likely to have better knowledge and in turn, better practices. Efficiency and efficacy can only be enhanced when we improve quality of resources and inputs.
With these two very different examples highlighting the importance of “quality,” we can begin to see how attention to the finer points of what we do, and what resources we use to do our tasks, can have far-reaching positive consequences. If we pay attention to quality, we are advancing our goals, and in the end producing a higher quality of life for all community members. Simply fulfilling short-term goals of efficiency and limited efficacy may not only be of benefit to those who staff and administer our systems but also fails to fulfill the much larger and wider affecting mission of enhancing community safety and quality of life. After all, is that not the goal of society, to protect, serve, and enhance the lives of the entire community? If so, it may be time, as the articles in this issue of the journal make clear, to broaden our focus and strive to do things not only efficiently and effectively but also in as high a quality manner as we can. If the purpose of social science is to improve the world in which we live, research such as that reported in this issue needs to be heeded.