From Justice Archipelago to Security and Justice Chain: Strategy-Organisation Configurations in the Dutch Criminal Justice System

Abstract

Until the 1980s continuity and stability were the key characteristics of the Dutch criminal justice chain. Judges and public prosecutors hardly bothered about management issues while the Ministry of Justice decided on staff, housing, and budgets. Each organisation focused on its own task. Within the organisations there was a clear-cut separation of the professional work of the lawyers and the administrative work and support functions. Technologies were hardly used to support the professional and the administrative work. Driven by an explosion of the number of cases in the 1970s and 1980s many reforms have been implemented. This contribution analyses the reforms in the criminal justice chain from the perspective of strategy-organisation configurations. These configurations represent more or less coherent combinations of law enforcement strategies and matching organisation principles. Until the 1980s the predominant strategy-organisation configuration is labelled as incident driven legalism in a criminal justice archipelago. The criminal justice chain is hardly connected, let alone coordinated. All links in the criminal justice chain react on criminal incidents more or less coincidently. In order to enable a more deliberate and purpose driven law enforcement strategy a first wave of reforms aimed at scaling up separate links (public prosecutor’s office, courts) and strengthening their autonomy. The strategy-organisation configuration that arises is referred to as policy driven managerialism in a pillarised criminal justice chain. A second wave of reforms is driven by ICTs. The large-scale automation of case management accommodates the use of risk management techniques and forces to differentiate work flows. The strategy-organisation configuration that arises is characterised as information driven risk management in a system-level bureaucracy. The latest wave of reforms in the criminal justice chain has only been initiated recently. These reforms aim at both strengthening the linkages within the criminal justice chain and between the criminal justice chain and other public organisations in the realm of law enforcement such as tax organisations and local governments. A new strategy-organisation configuration seems to emerge that combines a coherent criminal justice chain with a collaborative law enforcement strategy.