Title

General systems theory and criminal justice

Authors

Authors

T. J. Bernard; E. A. Paoline;P. P. Pare

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

J. Crim. Justice

Keywords

PEACE RESEARCH; Criminology & Penology

Abstract

Criminal justice agencies are organized sequentially - "output" from one agency is "input" to the next -but most scholars argue that criminal justice is not a system in a theoretical sense. In this article, it is argued that general systems theory (GST) reveals important insights into criminal justice structures and functions. Specifically, it is argued that the criminal justice system processes "cases" rather than people, and that the common goal of criminal justice processing is to "close cases so that they stay closed." It also is argued that processing capacity progressively declines, in that at each system point the subsequent agency cannot input as many cases as the previous agency can output. Each agency therefore experiences "backward pressure" to close cases in order to reduce input to the next agency. Overall, this article highlights that criminal justice agents and agencies are best understood as operating in the context of the larger whole, thus it is concluded that criminal justice is a system in the sense of general systems theory. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Journal Title

Journal of Criminal Justice

Volume

33

Issue/Number

3

Publication Date

1-1-2005

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

203

Last Page

211

WOS Identifier

WOS:000229488500001

ISSN

0047-2352

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