Explain the difference between a centralized organization and a decentralized organization. A centralized organization generally relies on a single person or a very small, select group of people to make the decisions for the rest of the organization to follow. Pertaining to criminal justice, this would be a national police force under the federal government or, in the more extreme cases, under a single totalitarian leader. Examples of nations with a centralized police force are Israel, Denmark, Belgium, and Sweden, where centralization has seen some success (Berkley, 1970). Contrarily, examples of centralization could also be found in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and fascist Italy and Spain (Berkley, 1970). It is in the latter examples …show more content…
The United States has an expansive decentralized police force where each state and most communities each have their own police department. The positives to a decentralized method include the police being close to the people they serve, thus bettering the relationship between the people and by holding the local department more accountable for their actions. Despite the positives that overshadow the negatives, decentralized police organizations often suffer from a communication breakdowns, except they usually occur between different departments whose jurisdictions and duties overlap with the other departments in the region. The other major issue with decentralized units is that due to the information breakdown, efficiency is typically sacrificed (Walker & Katz, 2013). For instance, LMPD with the various special units likely overlap in certain cases leading to retracing steps and costing the taxpayers more money. Another example is that in Indianapolis where I am lived before coming to Louisville, we had a local police force (Southport), IMPD (Indianapolis Metro Police Department), and the Indiana State Police who would all patrol the same metropolitan district, wasting the taxpayers’ money by duplicating the same beat with three different departments. In summation, the main difference between the two organization styles is mainly centered around how many people oversee the decision-making