Is the Criminal Justice Field Stuck in a Habit Loop?

• In Event: Looking Inward: A Structural Critique of How Justice Works

Abstract

Frequently governmental, political, and academic institutions are driven by organizational operations instead of logical rules and deliberate processes. Many times administrators and bureaucrats respond to circumstances with automatic routines, or habits, rather than evaluating information and making decisions. Charles Duhigg’s (2014) research has found that typically when an individual or institution is originally confronted with a problem, they utilize their full judgment and capability to process all of the information to find a solution; but, after encountering similar dilemmas multiple times, their commitment to seek out new information is lessened and replaced by a reliance on automatic routines, or a habit loop. Applying these ideas to the problem of controlling and preventing crime, have criminal justice systems not consistently employed the same strategies to no avail? This paper uses Duhigg’s (2014) analysis on the power of habits to ask, is the field of criminal justice stuck in a habit loop?

Authors

• Nicole Prior, East Tennessee State University

• Jennifer Pealer, East Tennessee State University

• Mary Hughes, East Tennessee State University