Reference no: EM131463196

Describe the content of the role of a probation officer. What are the norms and values associated with this work? Include those that can be regarded as legitimate, as well as those regarded as illegitimate. What are the sources of these norms and values? How do education, training, and the work experience influence them?

How can you distinguish between corruption and official deviance in policing? What socialization processes support each of these? Design an in-service training program whose chief goal is to combat the organizational processes you describe.

Describe how a culture of violence in high security prisons is perpetuated by the process of informal socialization. What steps could be taken by administrative personnel to address this issue? Could a training program be implemented? Would inmates be included in the process?

Your job is to develop a program for training corrections officers for a special internal affairs unit. They will investigate problems of contraband and violence in prison while working as regular officers. Whom would you recruit, and how would you structure the process of training? What would the content of training be? What problems with the socialization process do you anticipate?

respond to the post of at least one (1) student with whom you agree, making meaningful comment on the post explaining the strengths of the post's argument or the reason for agreement

respond to the post of at least one (1) student with whom you disagree, making meaningful comment on the post explaining the weakness of the post's argument or the reason for disagreement.

An informal group is a group of people going against the rules, norms or values for example in the criminal justice organization. This may be hard for people to get away, but having a group like this within the criminal justice system could be very dangerous for the people and for the organization as a whole. This also goes along with corruption in this organization. While doing these things others are being kept quiet, but in an organization like this people need to be punished for violating the rules of the organization. Every employee needs to know and understand that if they disobey their rules that they will 100% be punished for it. The administrators cannot be lenient with one person, because then others will think that it is acceptable to do the same. I believe that employees that do things that affects the organization negatively should be fired no matter how small the issue is, because if they learn that they can get away with anything at all people will still continue to do it. Stopping the problem at the littlest one should help the organization and them portraying a picture to the other employees that no bad behavior is acceptable no matter the size.

The term informal groups essentially refers to new members of a department who are socialized and conformed to the police culture of their departments. An example in the book pertained to police agencies who focused primarily on aggression in their work. It led to explain that new officers brought into this subculture typically learn this behavior by more seasoned officers where the goal is to fit in with the culture of the department. This kind of learning creates more of an impact compared to formal groups as informal learning is day-to-day interactions with ones peers and may occur unintentionally. Unfortunately negative influences sometimes exist within informal groups where the goal of each department should be to eliminate those influences as much as possible.

A way which this can be accomplished is for the department heads of administration to get involved. They can do this by actively participating in new member training by advising how the process is handled and setting the example for proper police behavior. There should also be an emphasis in meetings placed on officer behavior and if those rules are broken consistently then there should be sanctions placed against the officer. In essence, negative informal groups are the basis for problems within a police department and a way to combat this is by getting administration and higher level officers to show proper character within their agencies and to be more involved with new member adjustment.

Informal groups of police officers can end up causing large amounts of damage to the department's social fabric at large. In an ideal situation, all police officers entering the department would be socialized into the same dominant department culture. Where deviations may exist between individuals in this dominant culture, all officers in the department would be on the same page. These informal groups form when their is no dominant culture that is accepted by everyone, and smaller groups of like-minded officers within the department stick together and create a type of "sub-culture" between themselves.

These sub-cultures naturally exist in most organizations, as people tend to naturally gravitate towards like-minded individuals. Problems arise, however, when the values of a sub-culture or informal group go against the social and cultural values of the department at large. For example, a particular police department might have official policies in place for hiring women and the support of most employees, but a small group of "old guard" officers might never associate with these new female officers. In this example, the informal "old guard" group has social values that go against the department as a whole.

Ensuring adequate socialization of new hires is the most important step in countering the negative influences of informal groups. If an environment is created within the department in which everyone feels welcome, even if they do not agree with everything done they will not fracture off into smaller groups. Additionally, many informal groups are formed in response to a perceived complaint or issue within the department. Addressing the complaints of the informal groups, if reasonably possible, would also bring them back into the dominant department culture.

Informal groups are groups of people that for the most part go against the values and norms of the organization or larger group. In some situations it can be an informal group of something small like talking about the supervisor in a negative light or something as big as a group of people stealing money from the larger group or organization. Just like any organization police departments have informal groups that surface throughout. These groups can be very toxic to the police department and to their perception to the public if they are made visible. There is no one way to overcome these negative influences because people are people and there will always be at least one bad apple in the group. But maybe one way to lesson them is to make sure disciplinary actions are being taken against the informal groups that do form in police departments. Examples like probationary periods for small things and to go as far as to firing individuals that deface the mission and integrity of the department. When it comes to corrupt actions such as taking money in exchange for silence with drug dealers or messing with evidence in certain cases extreme disciplinary actions need to be taken in order to let everyone else know in the agency that those sort of actions will NOT be tolerated. Examples such as those that get out to the general public can have a bad perception of officers and what they do and if they do get out the public also needs to know that that particular department will not tolerate that sort of injustice which means not giving them desk duty or unpaid leave but taking serious actions. In this day and age police departments do not need anymore corrupt or informal groups surfacing making them look bad, if there are they need to be taken care of as soon as possible because it only takes that one to ruin it for everyone else.