Supervision vs. Management in the US Criminal Courts

Introduction 

The US criminal justice system is broken and from a careful evaluation, it is broken because it has always been supervised, instead of being managed. Evidence of brokenness includes manifest injustice based inter alia on racial and social class profiling. Many people who have been convicted, jailed, or even executed have later been found to have been innocent (Neubauer & Fradella, 2018). Overreliance on plea bargaining is also evidence of brokenness within the system. The members of staff who work in the criminal courts are carefully supervised, instead of being closely managed. The courts themselves are also keenly supervised instead of being comprehensively managed. Finally, the judicial process of the criminal justice systems is dominated by a supervisory approach instead of managerial one. For the instant term paper, supervision will have the meaning of giving meticulous instructions, monitoring the strict implementation of those instructions, then receiving a report of the instruction for either correction or affirmation (Shaw & Killer, 2018). Conversely, management will take the meaning of direct involvement during the planning, implementation, and evaluation of an activity. The criminal justice systems are broken almost irrevocably since for decades, it has always been supervised instead of being managed, a situation that needs urgent extenuation 

Statutory Supervision versus Management 

The criminal courts in America are divided into state and federal courts and are all governed by extremely stringent rules; hence amounting to supervisions as opposed to management. The courts adhere to an adversarial system where the defendant is pitted against the state with the judge playing the role of a fair adjudicator (Findley, 2017). The determination of the guilt or innocence of a defendant is determined by a jury after an adversarial and in most cases acrimonious hearing. The only other option to a jury trial is either a bench trial or a plea of guilty. The rules outlined above are mainly rigid and non-negotiable in criminal trials, both in the state and federal courts hence they are supervisory in nature, not managerial. A managerial process would have rules that allow the judge and prosecutor to handle every case on its own merits and determine the best cause of action on a case to case basis. Due to the laws that take a supervisory approach, the courts are as victims of the system as the defendants are. The main casualty of the stringent and supervisory status of the laws within the criminal justice process is justice itself as it is seldom served. 

Supervision versus Management of Criminal Justice Employees and Courts 

Based on common practice, laws, rules, and regulation, criminal justice employees in courts are supervised although they would function better if they were managed. The principle employee in any criminal court is the judge with the secondary employee being the prosecutor. The clerical members of staff and the probation officers can also be considered as subordinate members of staff. In a management scenario, the judge should be able to sit down with the prosecutor and the probation officers, go through the cases within the docket, and decide what should be done about it. Instead of such a managerial system, a supervisory system exists. The principal supervisor is the criminal procedure law, rules and practice. The secondary supervisor is the system of appeals courts that stretches up to the Supreme Court of the USA. Appellate courts closely supervise lower courts under the concept of stare decisis which literally means “the decision stands”. Under stare decisis , a decision that was made by a higher court about a subject matter is binding on all lower courts (Neubauer & Fradella, 2018). As indicated above, a management approach would entail going through individual cases and determining what needs to be done, as normally happens in an inquisitor system of jurisprudence. However, when the matter is brought before the judge, the hands of the judge, the prosecutor, and the probation officers are tied by the law and judicial precedence ab initio (Findley, 2017). 

Every action that the court takes and every decision that the court makes is carefully supervised. For an example, a serial killer has been ravaging a populace for years, raping, killing, and maiming residents. Local law enforcement after years of rigorous investigations discover who the serial killer is and realize that another gruesome murder is about to take place. Due to the probable cause laws, the police create a clever ruse that gets them a warrant which they use to search the killers home. Within the home they find clear evidence about tens of murders, enabling them to arrest the killer and save countless lives. When the matter is brought before the court, the defense raises the preliminary issues of an illegal search and have evidence that the search was done illegally. The court is now faced with a choice of releasing a serial killer to go and kill again or doing the right thing to save lives (Singer & Williams, 2018). 

From a management perspective, the case above would be very easy to solve. The judge would contact the appellate court and if necessary, the Supreme Court. The exigent circumstances that led to a few technicalities being followed in order to save lives would be explained and accepted by the higher courts. The technicalities would be ignored forthwith, and the killer kept away so that the community remains safe (Singer & Williams, 2018). Unfortunately, this is never the case in the supervisory-based criminal justice system. The law and judicial precedent have developed a concept known as the fruit of a poisonous tree. The concept is neither reasonable nor malleable. The moment the court receives evidence that due process was not followed in bringing the case before it, the case will be thrown out with prejudice, meaning that it cannot be brought before the court in future (Neubauer & Fradella, 2018). Based on the example given above, the judge would have no choice but to release the serial killer despite the fact that the killer is still an active danger to the society. Closely supervising criminal courts, instead of comprehensively managing them has crippled the concept of justice in the US criminal justice system. 

Overview of Supervision verses Management in the Courts 

The judges who, as outlined above are major victims of supervision are also forced to be supervisors as opposed to managers in their own courtrooms. The judge as a manager would be the team leader during the trial. For example, such a judge would be able to notice incompetence of the legal representative of a defendant and advise the defendant to get better representation. The judge would also be able to act on the excesses of the prosecution in the interest of justice, more so when the defendant is unrepresented. Instead of such a management-based approach to overseeing a trial, the judge is forced to be a supervisor who strictly follows the law, laid out rules and regulation, even when they are clearly wrong, inapplicable and a travesty to justice. The judge has to watch a party making a mistake quietly as intervening would lead to a mistrial. If for any reason the judge decides to act fairly and reasonably in the interests of justice, one of the two parties, will rush to the appellate court and get the ruling reversed. For these reasons, the judge is forced to be a supervisor instead of a manager, even when the life of a defendant is hanging in the balance, for example, in a capital offense trial. 

Outcomes of Supervision, not Management in Courts 

The strongest evidence that supervision instead of management has led to a broken criminal justice judicial system is that defendants no longer want their cases to be tried. Available research has shown that 97% of federal court criminal cases and 92% of state court criminal cases end up in plea bargains (Goode, 2012). These statistics mean that courts only handle 3% of federal cases and 7% of state cases, numbers that are so small they can be considered as margins of error. Plea bargains mean that guilt or innocence is no longer an issue as the prosecution and defense will hammer out an agreement regarding what kind of punishment the defendant will agree to, so as to avoid a trial. The fact that almost all defendants opt to plead guilty instead of facing trial is definitive evidence that the criminal court's system has completely broken down. Based on the research and analysis above, the failure of the system has been caused by a supervisory approach, instead of a managerial one. 

Conclusion 

The research, analysis, and discussion above prove beyond peradventure that the US criminal justice court system is broken mainly because it is being supervised, instead of being managed. Criminal courts follow a rigorous, meticulous, and rigid set of laws, rules, and regulations that are based on federal or state statutes, set procedure and judicial precedent. In a managerial approach, these laws, rules, and regulations would enable court staff, led by the judge to reason together and fairly handle cases as they are presented to them by law enforcement. Instead, there is a supervisory approach where everything has to be done in a specific way, whether or not that way is right. Judges have to follow the law, even when following it will lead to material injustices. As a supervisor, the appellate system that includes state supreme courts and the US Supreme Court stands ready to rule against any action by the lower courts that is not in line with the rigid laws, rules, and relations set. In the case it is ever argued that these rigid rules are there to protect the citizenry, available research proves otherwise as only 3% and 7% of defendants in federal court and state courts respectively are willing to risk trials, with the others opting for plea deals. 

References 

Findley, K. A. (2017). Reducing error in the criminal justice system.  Seton Hall L. Rev. ,  48 , 1265-1317 

Goode, E. (2012, March 22). Stronger hand for judges after rulings on plea deals. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/us/stronger-hand-for-judges-after-rulings-on-plea-deals.html 

Neubauer, D. W., & Fradella, H. F. (2018).  America's courts and the criminal justice system . Boston Massachusetts: Cengage Learning 

Shaw, M. K., & Keeler, H. R. (2018).  Supervision and Management: An Introduction for Support Staff  (Vol. 6). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 

Singer, R. G., & Williams, K. (2018).  Examples & explanations for criminal procedure II: From bail to jail . New York: Wolters Kluwer Law & Business