Scenario: You are the elected Sheriff for a county that encompasses a major metr

Question

Scenario:

You are the elected Sheriff for a county that encompasses a major metropolitan area. There has been an unfortunate series, in the past year, of officer-involved shootings where some citizens and the media claim that the officers murdered the suspects (now deceased) in cold blood. This led to a few protests that were peaceful and a few that turned to violence and looting.

This is only the start of your management troubles! The state supreme court ruled (a few weeks ago) that the conditions in your county prison are unhealthy and unsafe. The court ordered the release of 5,000 inmates to reduce the overcrowding problem that led to the unsafe and unhealthy conditions.

Finally, the Public Defender’s office has been forced to furlough attorneys, and freeze hiring, due to the financial impact (on the budget) of the recent national financial collapse. Each Public Defender has an average of 594 cases. The Public Defender has now refused to provide services to those arrested of third-degree felonies claiming that ‘adequate representation cannot be provided to the qualified indigent when my attorneys are so overly-burdened’.

Questions:

Distinguish the differences among short-range, intermediate, and long-range planning.

Create a short-range, intermediate, or long-term plan to resolve the officer-involved shooting issue.

Create a short-range, intermediate, or long-term plan to resolve the prison overcrowding issue.

Create a short-range, intermediate, or long-term plan to resolve the Public Defender’s office issue.

* Include at least three academic or professional sources to support your work.

Explanation / Answer

Short range plans ( with duration less than a year) are aimed at the ad hoc resolution to minimise the instantaneous impact of the problem. These include actions that can fix the issues for the time being till the long term solution can be planned and implemented. Medium term plans include a mix of immediate soutions and plans anticipating 2 of 3 years ahead of the time. Long term plans are usually 3 years or longer and address the root cause of the issue and aim for permanent solution to the problem.

(a) The officer shooting issue should be handled with a short term measure of putting the offending officers under suspension so that they may not influence the investigation in their favour. The medium term action is the investigation of authenticity and gravity of all allegations and accusations levelled by different bodies, through an unbiased and competent authority. The long term measures are to enact a comprehensive and transparent system of law enforcement with a code of conduct for the officers so that such issues may not arise again.

(b) Short term plan includes shifting of the inmates to the nearby prisons in small groups within next 3-4 months. Those serving short sentences for petty and low level crimes may be released permaturely. Medium term plan involves reinforcment of safety and securitysystems including vigil and monitoring aids, upgrading of infrastructure and deployment of greater volume of force. The hygienic conditions can be improved by outsourcing of certain housekeeping activities. Under long term plan, expansion of the prison or shifting it to a new, bigger location can be considered with improved facilities of security and hygiene.

(c) The short term solution to resolve the issues of attorneys is outsourcing of their part of work which involves small crime cases and insignificant work that requires more efforts and less expertise. This will help them to focus on more important issues and generate revenue for the defender's office to come up with their financial difficulties.

Medium term action is to create capacity building measures to make the system financially self dependant till the economy comes back on track. Long term actions should be taken once the financial issues are sorted out. They should be aimed at easing of burden on the attorneys through hiring and training sufficient manpower and at the same time making the system completely self reliant so that it does not have to depend on the budget.

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