Osgv In Law Enforcement

865 Words4 Pages

Law enforcement’s increased arrest rates affect other criminal justice agencies including prosecutors. The increased arrest rate increases prosecutor’s caseloads. Prosecutor’s caseloads were increased due to legitimate and illegitimate arrests. Due to some officer’s misconduct, prosecutors became suspicious of arrests and were dismissing many of the tagging cases that came from certain blocks. Prosecutors were forced to use their limited time and resources to dismiss the suspicious charges while simultaneously pursuing charges for other legitimate cases. Probation and parole officers are then impacted by the plea bargains that are resulting from the arrests law enforcement officials are making under OSGV. Plea bargains often place criminals …show more content…

While the correct implementation of OSGV appears to be a reasonable goal, ultimately this goal was not reached. OSGV’s deign required the “coordination and cooperation of different stakeholders ” (Lipsey, 1999). The coordination and cooperation of all law enforcement officials involved in the program was required for it to be implemented as intended. Due to one lieutenant and his officers, ten blocks out of forty were operating in a way not prescribed. Therefore, OSGV was not fully or properly implemented across all of the treatment blocks. This resulted in a “disjunction between theory and practice” which undermined OSGV’s effectiveness (Lipsey, …show more content…

OSGV was intended to reduce gang-related violence and tagging within communities with high rates of violence. The results from tables one, two and three show that OSGV did not have statistically significant effects, causing it to fall short of its intended effects. OSGV also needed to be cost-effective to be successful. While there was no mention of cost, policymakers needed to evaluate the cost of implementing the program, and if the outcomes of the program justifies its cost. A cost-benefit analysis of OSGV is an essential step that needed to be conducted to determine if the program was financially justified. Usually, an effective cost-benefit analysis “identifies the cost per outcome” (Mears, 2007, 677). Cost-benefit analysis usually includes policymakers converting program outcomes to monetary values and this allows them to determine if a program is financially beneficial (Mears 2007). OSGV needs to be preventing gang-related violence as intended and this outcome should be converted to a monetary value and compared to the cost of the program to determine if it is