NCJ Number
105871
Journal
Urban Life Volume: 15 Issue: 1 Dated: (April 1986) Pages: 70-102
Date Published
1986
Length
33 pages
Annotation
This article describes juvenile recordkeeping procedures in two police departments to illustrate how records are products of the organizational context in which they are developed and reflect organizational concerns and realities.
Abstract
Because officers realize that the records document their own performance as well as that of those they encounter, they routinely take care to shape these records in ways that promote the desired evaluations. In this way, officers orient, as recordkeepers, to the prospective uses and careers of the documents they produce. In addition, the same organizational concerns that shape the records also inform the way police code and decode records. In fact, the skillfully deployed knowledge of the organizationally embedded nature of records in writing and reading them comprises an important dimension of the officer's competence as an organizational actor. 9 notes and 13 references. (Author abstract modified)