LAW ENFORCEMENT AND JUSTICE ADMINISTRATION BLOG

Law enforcement officers are frequently called to intervene in situations that involve juveniles, and many times it's discovered that the circumstances which brought police into contact with a juvenile may have grown out of parent-child relationships.  It's important for law enforcement workers to know how family dynamics can impact juvenile behavior; such as a parent who abuses drugs or alcohol, is too busy pursuing personal or work goals, or a parent who hasn't developed proper parenting skills.  Hopefully, through knowing the family dynamics, a law enforcement officer can effectively intervene and steer the family to productive resources for the benefit of the child and family. Dallas Trone is a WIU LEJA student currently enrolled in Research Methods.  Through the course of developing her research project, she discovered important parenting traits and monitoring skills that show a relationship between attachment and delinquency.  Dallas has taken this information and put

It is not uncommon for police to respond to calls for service regarding out-of-control juveniles.  Good officers take the time to learn about behavior disorders so they can help a family begin appropriate interventions for the health of the juvenile and the family.  MRAI is a law enforcement term used in Illinois to describe a juvenile who is not in the process of committing a criminal offense, but needs emotional health services instead. This post was written  by Alyssa Dawson.  Alyssa is an LEJA student at Western Illinois University, and this post is part of a presentation she made in her Juvenile Justice class. MINOR REQUIRING AUTHORITATIVE INTERVENTION (MRAI)             Where I grew up as a child, there were a handful of children that had behavioral issues. Those children were typically kicked out of that school and sent to an alternative school in another town. They would often act out and disrupt class multiple times a day, and it was usually a day-to-day occurrence. Some of th

This post was written by Elizabeth Conner.  Elizabeth is an LEJA student at WIU, and this post is a summary of a project she presented to her Juvenile Justice class. There are many different situations police respond to for juveniles.  The big one that police respond to are abuse and neglect of a child in a home.  The police response to a call of neglect or abuse is to access the situation and take the child into temporary custody without a warrant if they feel the child is in danger.  This is to protect the child from any other harm that could come to them in the current situation they were in. When interviewing the child there can be some challenges that arise that investigators should be aware of; many children do not want to tell the investigator anything out of fear of being taken away from their parents or guardian, they also are frightened by places they do not know with someone they are unfamiliar with so put them in a comfortable area and make it child friendly. Police also wo

Anecdotally, through my experiences, I have witnessed numerous times where a departmental  Chief or shift administrator will establish new expectations or measures of performance for employees.  Generally, performance expectations are set to assuage a new demand from external sources or to address a potentially dangerous emerging trend.  Even if the evidence for the new expectation is compelling and thoughtful, many times, employees view the new standard for performance as suspect at best.  Employees often discount it as temporary, arbitrary, or misguided.  Many times, employees will judge a performance expectation against their own internal emotional beliefs of how a thing should or should not operate; instead of a rational weighing of the evidence while being mindful that they are the employee, not the boss.  As an employee, they were hired to do the work of the organization.  The people who run the organization get to set performance standards and it is the responsibility of the emp

One of the easiest actions for increasing worker performance and creating a pleasant work environment is clarity.  Workers, supervisors, and administrators want clarity.  Clarity of message.  Clarity of rules. Clarity of expectations. People by nature are creatures of habit.  We perform best in environments that are predictable and stable.  Humans like the comfort of knowing what to expect and being able to predict likely outcomes.  Think about your own small habits and the comfort these bring.  Do you like to shop at the same grocery store?  Do you tend to park in the same space at work?  Do you sit in the same chair for shift briefings or meetings?  Do you keep items at work or home arranged in a consistent way?  More specifically, do you wear your work uniform and gear the same way, in the same place, all the time?  More likely than not, most of us can probably identify with habitual patterns of behavior, and would almost certainly admit that we have these habits because they make u

What does trust look like to you? Is it a a cliché? Does it sound old, tired, and worn out? What images or meanings does the word trust invoke and hold for you? In Lying (1993), Sissela Bok tells us “ Whatever matters to human beings, trust is the atmosphere in which it thrives”; meaning trust must be the underpinning for whatever you’re looking to accomplish. Bok’s notion on trust is especially true in the field of law enforcement.  The actions taken by law enforcement officials have a profound ability to impact the emotional, financial, and stability of families and individual lives for a long time. Research tells us working in an organization built on trust and respect creates high performing, ethical, and fair-minded employees.  Therefore, it’s crucial for law enforcement employees to work in a climate built on trust since their authority can have a weighty influence over others. Unfortunately, there are times law enforcement administrators and co-workers alike treat the word and