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“Why so many guilty pleas?”—Closer Look at the”Courtroom Workgroup” from the Homans’ Human Group Theory

Related reading:

Workgroup Decision-Making: https://www.albany.edu/understanding-guilty-pleas/Core_3_Courtroom_Workgroup_Decision_Making.php

Homans’ Theory Of The Human Group: Applications To Problems of Administration, Policy, and Staff Training In Group Service Agencies: https://www.bjpa.org/search-results/publication/5390Courtroom

The first resource summarizes the concept of “courtroom wrokgroup”  and the current theories attempting to address the driving factors behind this informal arrangement; and also the theoretical insights the related researches have offered to the study of pleas and the potential it would draw to address the social inequalities reinforced by the legal system. The second resource looks at the training cases of Group service agencies, attempting to examine the curriculum and policies with Homan’s social theory, which is “largely ignored in the group work literature”.

The paper on Homans’ theory and Group Service Agencies includes detailed proof and concept graphs explaining the set up of Homan’s group model, which I see fits very well with the “Courtroom Workgroup model” as a “confined” system in a specific environment (courtroom), interdependent actors (judges, prosecutors, defense attorney), with shared goals (passing cases, realizing “justice”) and ongoing interaction——that’s what Homans defines as “primary group” , with external environment as the society who expects efficient handling of cases and a general (hard to supervise) expectation of “right” judgement.

Created by Prof. Erin York Cornwell for class Soc 2560: Sociology of Law offered at Cornell University

Source:https://www.bjpa.org/search-results/publication/5390Courtroom

The “courtroom workplace” model attempts to explain the huge amount of plea bargaining happening everyday in the court between the prosecutor and attorneys ——who should have been adversaries and argue vehemently with each other in “ideal” situation. In this ideal imagination, with the Homans’ notions applied, the courtroom would be a group with interactions driven by conflicting interests, due to disagreed consensus, resulting in negative affections——with PD and attorneys despising each other——which is not true from observation. This inconsistence can be explained by  another set of factors influencing this group model by Homans: social necessity, based upon need or symbiosis and obligation. Based on the “shared goal” or social necessity of keeping an efficient “going rate” of cases and healthy workplace relationships, the courtroom parties actually form “norms” and “similarity” and  professional “affection” with each other, even with theoretically conflicting interests.

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