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Marion County Probation Department Analysis

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In criminal justice organizational settings the effectiveness of the department solely relies on the managers understanding of organizational effectiveness, its measurements, theories, and how to manage their employees. Given that Marion County is the biggest county in the state of Indiana, there are numerous departments and personnel that are involved in its criminal justice system. Within the Marion County Superior Courts, there are different entities used to help supervise offender pre and post-trial. Some of these entities consist of Marion County Community Corrects, Marion County Probation Department, and Marion County Jail. This paper will review the Marion County Probation Department’s organizational design, its effectiveness and recommendations …show more content…

The department has more of a divisional structure. For example, Marion County has two main divisions within the department known as the Adult and Juvenile Divisions. Within those divisions there are many sub units that handle different specialized caseloads such as the Field Team unit, Mental Health, Sex Offender, Pre-Sentence Investigation Writers, Intake (Youth and Adults), Court Team, and Regular Caseload Officers. These different units have supervisors that manage each personnel. Each of these units may receive cases from any of all 24 criminal court divisions. This sometimes leads to personnel having high numbers on their caseloads. As a Probation Officer in the Regular Caseload unit, I supervise over 130 probationers. These high numbers play a huge role in employee burn-outs and turnovers. Different Judges in the each courtroom require different conditions from the offender and each Probation Officer is required to maintain enforcing those …show more content…

This first major concern within the department is the fear of embarrassment and conflict. I completed an internship with department in 2011 under Chief Robert Bingham. The department seemed to run smoothly, employees seem to love coming to work and most of all Chief Bingham was very involved with each Officer and their well-being. The way the department was structured and the policies that were in place, kept the caseload numbers down to less than 80 per Officer and allowed Officers to spend more time with the clients. Also, all officers did not have to be certified for drug and alcohol evaluations because there was a team who specialized in that area. Under the current Chief Christine Kerl, a lot of those practices and policies were removed and new ones were implemented immediately. The department turnover rates have spiked since these changes have occurred. Chief Kerl has been resistant in reverting back to the old policies due to the fear of embarrassment and conflict within the Officers. Several Officers have complained and shared ideas, but most of the time those ideas are

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