Managing a Criminal Justice Crisis: An Organizational Justice Understanding of Change in a Sheriff’s Office

Abstract

The research related to organizational justice in criminal justice agencies has specifically examined the police departments and prisons, but sheriff’s offices have been absent from examination. This study’s data come from a sheriff’s office in California after a significant organizational change instigated by the implementation of Assembly Bill 109. Similar to most organizational change, this modification was instigated by the administration without seeking employee input. For this study, a total N of 229 employees (92 % of employees) responded to a survey instrument. Using measures of procedural justice as the independent variable and distributive and interactional justice measures as the control variables, the findings demonstrate employees furthest from the organizational decision-making are least likely to support the change. Measures of distributive justice were non-significant in all models and measures of interactional justice were uneven in different models. This research addresses a gap in the current literature by examining a sheriff’s office, but generalizablility of the findings are limited.