Public administration presents us with many institutions in which to observe organizational behaviors, and the very form and structure of these institutions illuminates how organizations are formed and what influence different behaviors have on that formation. Leaders and policy makers in these organizations respond to perceptions of success or failure. An examination of a particular institution in crisis - the juvenile justice system - shows how administrators view the problem, how the problem developed, and how policy makers are influenced in determining what to do about it.
The method of inquiry begins with the inductive examination of the issues involved, through readings of observers and theorists in order to develop a general concept of the problem and of the organizational behavior responding to the problem. The intent is to utilize an abductive framework for decision-making about the issue. Williams (1985) has described abduction as a process of innovation or second-order change. To achieve this, it is necessary first to have a method enabling us to see the logic of the present culture and second to communicate this to others (133-135). Haney (1992) indicates the necessity of seeing the subject being studied in terms of change over time so that we look to the past to see how it has developed and thus to the future to see how it will or can develop (423-424). The juvenile justice system will be examined in terms of change over time, and this will be the method to be communicated to show the organizational behavior of the institution today leading to a consideration of developments for tomorrow.
The American juvenile justice system is considered a system in crisis. It is not only overloaded by increased delinquency, and at that by increasingly violent acts of delinquency by inner city gangs in particular, but it is also a system seen as ineffective at the best of times. There has long been a tension in the system b...