Sunday, January 26, 2020

The management approach of the Compstat model

The management approach of the Compstat model The police department of New York has integrated the Compstat model, which is a management approach that uses computer technology to follow up crime occurrences and help police officers identify the areas that are most vulnerable to criminal activities. At the same time, the model is useful in examining current crime patterns, and aims at maximizing resources available to the police officers in their fight against crime. According to Vito, Walsh, Kunselman (2004), Compstat (Computerized Statistics) is a goal orientated strategic management process that uses information technology, operational strategy, and managerial accountability to control crime and police neighborhoods, (p.1). There are four main principles of the Compstat model. The first one outlines the need for the police to obtain in good time, correct information on crime occurrences. In this case, police personnel perform crime analysis, that is, they identify the nature of the crime, the offender, the time of offense, and how the offender intends to carry it out. To achieve this, police personnel write reports on a weekly basis, giving statistical information on the arrests and summons they have made during the week, complaints they have received from the public concerning crime, crucial cases and the crime trends they have observed. The head of the Compstat Unit is in charge of receiving the weekly reports and saving them in a database. With the help of these reports, police officers can make comparisons between trends in crime and identify similarities as well as differences, and the most appropriate strategies to address these. The second element requires that the police employ workable strategies based on the intelligence they have, to prevent and solve crimes. In this instance, they identify which crimes and crime zones need quick intervention and make these their priority. At the same time, the police assess the available strategies in terms of their short and long-term effectiveness, as well as involve other groups, which are not necessarily police agencies. For instance, they involve religious, educational institutions, entrepreneurs, local government authorities and the community. The third element prescribes fast mobilization of material, financial and personnel resources to counter the crime patterns. This is because; the model can identify potential crime situations in an area, even before the residents alert the police on their suspicions. The fourth element demands progressive appraisal of police personnel, departments, and material resources in order to ensure that crime trends reduce. Performan ce appraisals are possible through reports that capture the profiles of each commander of police and these enable the other police officers to compare their own performance with that of their heads. With correct implementation, the Compstat approach can aid government authorities to assess police departments and check for the improper use of material and financial resources, as well as poor performance. The other two principles of the Compstat model require that the police operate on clear objectives in their fight against crime and each officer is responsible for the overall success of the police force in reducing crime rates. The members of the police force should be aware of the goals they intend to achieve and these must at the same time, be attainable within the stipulated period. Goals dictate the rating of the performance of police personnel, depending on whether they have achieved them. The chief as well as the commanders of various police agencies therefore have the responsibility of communicating clear and precise instructions to their subjects, in order to ensure that the latter achieve the desired performance. This explains why there is need for regular briefs among the police force in order to equip them with the necessary information on what their leaders expect of them. On a short-term basis, the Compstat model aims at reducing crime rates, while its long-term objective is to create a permanent change in the community and improve peoples lives by ensuring a safe environment. The measures to assess the effectiveness of the model on short-term basis would include examining weekly reports on the crimes occurring, in order to establish whether there are fewer or more offenses each day. Long-term effectiveness measures would involve the analysis of crime trends over a period such as a number of years, in order to establish whether the crime rates have gone down. At the same time, the weekly meetings to review crime reports provide forums to assess whether the police departments are making progress in reducing crime rates. These meetings on performance appraisal of police personnel serve both the immediate and long-term goals of the Compstat model. This is because if appraisals indicate that, some of the members of the force are not successful in reducing crime over a given period, the chief may take action such as re-training, retrenchment, or shifting to another department. The model is advantageous in that it promotes a consultative process in decision-making. It enhances intelligence sharing among the police officers and departments, accountability as well as coordination and a team spirit. This is possible through the meetings involving all levels of management. In addition, seeks to enable the police maximize the available resources in their fight against crime. Moreover, holding every member of the force accountable for its success in fighting crime ensures that each plays his or her role, and that there is no blame game when results are not forthcoming. In addition, ensuring timely and correct information on potential crime zones enables the police to act swiftly to prevent criminal activities. This is because; they are aware of what is happening on the ground. At the same time, they are able to develop the right strategies and response to the crime trends they have already identified. This increases their chances of success rather than in cases where they act after crisis. The Compstat approach to management promotes the belief that the police force is able to lower crime rates through employing the right strategies. Promoting continuous performance appraisal based on weekly reports enables the police force to establish its strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, it allows police to involve the community and other stakeholders in the fight against crime. This shows that the police are not working alone and are committed to ensuring a safe environment for all. On the other hand, the Compstat model has some disadvantages. One limitation of this model is that it is difficult to assess its success. When crime rates reduce, it is hard for police officers to attribute this phenomenon only to the model. On the other hand, when the crime rates stagnate or increase, it is difficult to tell whether failure lies only in the implementation of the models principles. Moreover, the Compstat model is susceptible to manipulation by police officers. For instance, due to pressure to reduce crime rates, they may fail to keep reports of crimes in order to give a false impression of less crime occurrences in a given area. At the same time, police officers may use their subjective judgments to declare some crimes as minor, and therefore of less significance, in order to reduce the statistics on the major crimes. This sort of manipulation of statistics will therefore give a false impression of progress in reduction of significant crimes. Similarly, communities whose crime rate reports show that the police have made progress in averting crimes, will receive less financial, material and personnel resources than those where the crime rates are still high. In case these reports are false, this implies that such communities will suffer more from crime because the police will attend to them less. In addition, since evaluation of the performance of police personnel depends largely on the crime rate reports, members of the force are likely to manipulate these, in order to give a false impression of their success in fighting crime. Consequently, the performance appraisals will be faulty, given that their bases are not accurate. At the same time, there is a possibility of awarding ineffective police personnel, rather than those who deserve merit. This is because the ineffective members can manipulate c rime reports to favor them, and they will get acknowledgment. As part of the implementation of the Compstat model, the chief of police will have to take other measures. These include having the current police force undergo refresher courses on crime prevention and at the same time, recruit, and train new officers in order to have sufficient and qualified personnel to serve the community. Police officers will also require training on the Compstat model in order to understand its functioning and crime analysis so that they are able to filter intelligence in an accurate manner. In this case, the chief will need to seek budgetary support from the government and non-governmental organizations. Apart from monetary aid, the chief will require the government to see to it that unemployment rates reduce through the creation of jobs. This is because crime rates tend to increase with high unemployment rates, as people have to find ways to feed themselves and their families. If they do not have jobs, they are likely to engage in criminal behavior such as th eft and murder in order to earn a living. Another intervention required will be the integration of other police departments, such as traffic police, crime detectives, and forensic experts into the crime prevention department. This will assist in spreading crime prevention to other areas and increase the scope of operation of the model. At the same time, the chief will need to appoint commanders at different levels in order to ensure that there is decentralization of the decision-making process. He will also create meeting rooms to allow for roundtable discussion sessions, as these are more likely to enhance the participation of all the police personnel in decisions concerning strategies to fight crime. Moreover, the chief will have to lay down the protocols that his officers will follow in the convening of briefings and other meetings as well as reporting procedures. This will ensure that there is no conflict in the lines of command because the police officers will be aware of to whom they should report. Since the Compstat model requires the use of technology, the chief will need to see to it that the police department has sufficient computer equipment as well as the necessary software programs such as systems to aid in identifying crime-prone areas, and databases to record crime occurrences. At the same time, a police website may be necessary to enhance community policing. This will enable the flow of information on crime rates from the public to the police, as well as reports from the latter to the community. In addition, the chief will need to ensure that the police officers clear any pending warrants of arrest and make the community aware that the force will not tolerate even the minor crimes. In this case, the chief will need to organize the force to carry out awareness initiatives among themselves and in the community. In conclusion, the chief can still adopt the Compstat model and modify it to suit the needs of his police department. He does not have to copy the model of the New York police department, because the situational needs of his department and that of the former are likely to be different. This is because the approach outlines only the basic principles of management that the police force and other organizations need to follow to achieve the intended objectives. Its intent is to serve as a guide to managerial principles and not to provide a dogmatic approach to the running of organizations. The model is therefore flexible, and police personnel can adopt different strategies to fight crime, based on the needs of the community they are serving. According to the models principles, they will only need to ensure that they choose strategies that are efficient for the crimes they target. Consequently, the model is suitable and can work even in small law enforcement agencies.

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Enron And Ethics Essay

Having some detailed written code of ethics like Enron had is usually not enough. Enron had a 64 page code of ethics and incase you might be wondering, the pages were not blank. However, despite this, it went down. The organizations ought to infuse some integrity and ethics in their corporate structure and in their success definition. To be precise, Enron ethics were simply ignored by the management and the employees. In any organization, the functions of any department should be based on ethical values, competence, integrity and a clear accountability of financial matters. Enron totally ignored these functions thus leading to its bankruptcy. As the company’s reputation did grow globally, hence there was competition of the employees therefore leading to individual greed and also the generation of egotism in the company. Every employee wanted to earn more, achieve a lot and hence there was the high motivation by the company to succeed. Such an atmosphere leads to a tendency to distrust people as everybody is concerned with their personal interests. There were so many dealings in the finance section hence the company’s goals were underestimated as well as the business ethics. Therefore it is imperative to give an immense background on Enron’s collapse and various views that can be deducted from its collapse. Enron’s, history, collapse the whistleblowers and conflicts The main issue which led to its downfall lay comfortably in the department of the operations management. At one time the company was receiving lots of praises from outsiders and then it was mounted with a decentralized control in the finance sector and also their decision structure gave an unclear and illogical picture on the activities of the company and its operations. Enron Corporation was one of the largest companies in Houston, Texas which used to sell natural gas, electricity and also distributed energy. It also offered other services for example bandwidth interest connections as well as offering financial services and providing management of risk services globally. The company gradually became powerful due to its initiative marketing strategies as well as the endorsement of communications and power bandwidth services and the offshoots of risk management. All these services got supervised by the department of operations management and other departments. Though the functions of these departments were executive in their nature, there was however lack of responsibility, integrity, control and creativity. The absence of these vital ethics did lead to the entire bankruptcy of the whole company. Kenneth lay who died three months before he was to be finally sentenced was the founder of Enron in the year 1985. He initiated the electricity sale and then afterwards US congress did pass legislation on the deregulation of natural gas. Enron before its collapse could report some annual revenues in the year 1990 of $ 10 billion and in the year 2000 to about $ 101 billion (Mark, 2002). In October 2, 2002, early in the morning, Andrew, Fastow who was Enron’s former chief and the financial officer did voluntarily surrender to the FBI agents and was led in hand cuffs to the car trailed by the television cameras and reporters. He was later taken to federal house and was charged with mail fraud, securities fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. He was sentenced for ten years (Loren, 2003). In the 1990s, Enron was a universal lauded company that did transform all the old businesses and started creating new ones. However, the criminal complains did cap disclosures and revealed that it was poorly managed and had amplified its reliance on some convoluted business ordeals in order to maintain growth objectives and encourage some unbridled ingenuity that resulted to fraud. It is patent that the company had some poor internal controls and unreliable top managers. Enron came crushing in 2001 and filed for what could have been termed as the nation’s vast bankruptcy. What were the main causes of its down fall? First the financial statements of Enron were not transparent and did not give a clear detail on the finances and operations with analysts and shareholders. Second it had a complex business model that actually stretched on the accounting limits thus required the company to use the limitations of accounting in order to manage on its earnings as well as modify on its balance sheet to limelight a constructive depiction of its whole performance. It is completely patent in the Enron movie; these scandals had grown tremendously out of some steady accumulation of the values. Habits and actions that had already began many years before later going out of control. The top managers who were the whistleblowers like Jeffrey Skilling who was the chairman and Andrew Fastow contributed to the downfall. The auditor, Arthur Andersen, also got accused of reckless application standards in the audits out of conflict of interest over the vital consultancy fees that had been generated by this company. Finally, in November 28, of 2001, Enron was declared bankrupt. The company lost confidence in its investors and at the end had very little cash to run business and satisfy some hefty debts. Trade secrets and privacy in Enron Trade secret is by definition any information that the company keeps as a secret in order to offer them an advantage over other competitors. Basically Enron was a multi billion dollar company that had assets that were far flung that did rival those of other companies and countries thus there had to be some information on their weakness in order to bring them down that was unknown to some average citizens. According to Debka, the first hidden weakness of Enron was based on finance which could have made the competitors destroy the company fast. Enron hid hefty blocks of liabilities from investment company’s eyes through creation of shell companies to which they were basically shuffling debts. Since the outside companies had no tie to this company, there is no one in the investment community who realized how immensely in debt Enron was and how it was affecting on its pictures of profitability. The Enron executives knew that if this information if it was made public then the investors would end up selling their stock. Enron basically had to hide some hefty liabilities in their shell company to show the investors that they were still at a profit. The second weakness it had was the fact that it held some contracts on foreign soil thus depending on those countries to pay all their bills according to the agreement. All the conflicts of interest of this company were finally not solved as they accumulated and led to bankruptcy. All this later led to court cases where the convicts were sentenced. All this shows there was some extent of privacy. Kenneth lay already knew that Enron was undergoing some financial trauma but still went ahead to lie to the shareholders and the investors that the company was at its best shape. They kept their financial crisis a secret. Honesty and Enron The moral demand of transparency as well as honesty is the foundational principle in investing in the free markets. Any decision of any corporation to ignore some moral demands that are based on transparency and honesty in their financial arrangements should never be used like an excuse to smother the spirit of the entrepreneurial in aggressive situations (Philip, 2001). Analysts and the commentators analyzed on the hinge matter that led to the down fall of Enron. It is lucid that the demise of Enron did not lie in the deregulation of electric power but in some questionable practices of accounting by the company. Thus we can denote that honesty which is an ethical principal was not curtailed. Despite their higher earnings, in 2001 Jeffrey Skilling resigned for some disclosed reasons and Enron reported a loss of $ I billion because of poor performance. Despite the angle you look at the whole phenomenon, it is quite clear that there lacked honesty at Enron. In the documentary ‘Enron: the smartest guys in the room’ it depicts on some o the social evils like hubris, greed and lies that did bring Enron down. The film does a tremendous job of digging up a lot of dirty acts where the whistle blowers could tell some plain lies to the government, investors, and employees and make it sound very good. Virtues and Enron Despite the mischievous and questionable deeds by Enron, failing to credit them for some charity work they did will be questioning on our ethics too. Most media reports have reported on some good work that was done by Ken Lay, who is the former Enron’s CEO. With his family he gave generously to the church through the family’s charitable foundation which did hold over $ 50, 000,000 of all Enron stock in the year 2000 (Tim, 2010). Enron made some sufficient donations to the legitimate charities. (Francis, 2002). Utilitarianism and Enron Some theories and principles can be used to give an inner analysis on the situation at hand that led to this failure. Utilitarianism theory by John, Stuart Mill, does offer some straightforward method of approach in deciding the morally right action for all situations we find ourselves in. This is a theory that does consider what is good for everybody. To discover what we ought to do, we should identify first the divergent courses of actions that can be performed in the situation and all the future benefits as well as harms that can mount from that. Utilitarianism states that we should always take the course of actions that offers the most benefits when the costs have already been taken into full account (Manuel et al, 1989). In this case it is patent that utilitarianism concept was never used. The company since it already knew that it was going down to the drains could have come up with a strategy that was rational to save them from the predicament instead of fooling those around it that it was enjoying some benefits. They could have used this theory to look unto the future possibilities and work towards attaining sustainability. They should have been a global responsibility to advance in their financial aspects (Yvon, 2003). Egoism and Enron Unlike Utilitarianism, egoism theory states that individuals should only act to their own best interest and self interest. Egoism is basically not effectual for solving the moral conflicts. In Enron Company most people got away with this theory. Egoism is only based in addressing concerns that are based on satisfying our own desires and getting what we really want (Jelena & Kristijan 2008). The employees at Enron lost their jobs and life savings and the higher executives cashed in millions and received other millions in the bonuses for all the stock inflation thus bringing the company down. There were blatant interest conflicts that were overlooked, members of the board received hefty gifts from executives, millions were spent to discourage oversight and government regulations and warnings from within were ignored (Lawrence, 2002). That is pure egocentrism that should be discouraged in the workplaces.

Friday, January 10, 2020

Purchasing Professional Paper Writing Service

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Thursday, January 2, 2020

The Plague Of Europe And Asia - 1165 Words

The fourteen hundreds were a time of turmoil in Europe and Asia for many reasons . It was a time of Panic, disease, political instability, and a decline in the power of the church . Although each of these problems are somewhat unrelated, they all stem from the same source, the Bubonic Plague. The bubonic plague started in Asia, and spread its way into parts of Northern Africa and Europe devastating everything in its path. Not only did the Black Death effect the people of Europe and Asia, it effected their economic, social, and religious lives as well . During the early 1300’s in Asia, a group of Mongols were traveling through southwestern China . Their goal was to invade the entirety of China with their troops. Unknown to them they carried a much more powerful weapon that would weaken China much more than any soldier could. While traveling through the southern part of China, a group of rats infested with a bacterium called, Yersinia Pestis, also known as the Bubonic Plague . The Black Plague started out as just fever, chills, and headaches but could quickly develop into a much more serious disease causing seizures, vomiting, and growths filled with pus and blood . These sores were extremely contagious and helped spread the plague much faster . Once the Mongols had captured a good portion of central China, the disease hit full stride. In areas like Beijing, almost 90% of the population was wiped out due to the Black Plague . Over the course of approximately 70 years, China’sShow MoreRelatedEssay on How the Black Plague Effected Society741 Words   |  3 Pages The plague is a dangerous and deadly disease. The plague is one of the oldest diseases known to the human race. Back when Europe was still in the middle ages all the people including serfs, royalty, jews, and church members were devastated by disease that was unknown to them. The disease spread rapidly through Europe through a variety of means. 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