Criminology

The possibility of local and international security threats against America has increased as a result of the impact of globalization, foreign policy and the increase of both legal and illegal immigration. The department of homeland security was implemented through the amalgamation of twenty two agencies and charged with the task of predicting, understanding, preventing and dealing with any security threats and the aftermaths and also responding to natural disasters. This was also meant to provide a more united and effective front in the fight against terrorism. Recently, the department of homeland security has received a lot of criticism on the charges that it has been largely ineffective in meeting these mandates. Critics have implied that the homeland security system is mismanaged and laden with bureaucracies causing it to be a big waste of public resources. The highly popularized data mining fiasco that resulted in the loss of more than forty two million, the loss of three hundred and fifty million dollars as a result of failed contracts and the dismal performance after hurricane Katrina have led to a decrease of public faith in the ability of the department to protect the American population. There is therefore need for major reforms in the management of the department to ensure efficiency and increase public trust in their ability.

The department of homeland security was implemented through the Homeland Security Act of November 2002, after the September 11 terrorist attacks, in an attempt by the US government to protect its citizens from local and international threats (Cole, 2003). To achieve this mandate, the US government further instituted several measures which included reorganization of the security and intelligence arms and increase in federal homeland security funding (Flynn, 2004). This led to increased coordination between security bodies and better efficacy in anti terrorist efforts. There have been no other terrorist attacks on United States after the September 11 attacks. Analysts have critiqued the homeland security department largely due to the fact that it is not clear whether they have had anything to do with the lack of international security threats or this has been as a result of other factors including increased public awareness (Mueller, 2006). To this regard, it is impossible to determine the exact impact of the homeland security department on international terrorist threats.

Policy discussions regarding the operation and role of the homeland security department have remained largely irrational stemming from fear of similar terrorist attacks, perceptions on the historical US stance on foreign relations and the repercussions of these past decisions. Politicians on the other hand are steering the American population towards achieving a perfect but unattainable form of security (Flynn, 2004). The result of this is the current disillusionment with the operation of the homeland security department. There is therefore need for all stakeholders to focus their efforts towards creating an effective, self sustaining homeland security department which is sorely based on responding to threat.

To this regard, the government should critically analyze the possibilities of external terrorist threats taking place in America. Since these threats are unlikely, the government should therefore allocate the available federal resources accordingly to ensure that they especially cater for more urgent local arms of security (Mueller, 2006). The department of homeland security has in the past taken up the large bulk of federal assistance on the assumption that they have more intensive resource demanding responsibilities than other departments (Mueller, 2006).Instead of over funding this department, the government should instead utilize foreign alliances to deal with the threat of Islamic fundamentalist groups like Al Qaeda. In addition, there is need to invest on other arms of security especially the civil aviation departments, cargo inspection and air missile defense teams (Kent, 2006). This approach is more specific and therefore likely to prevent actual threats.

The department of homeland security is also laden with weak internal processes and a dire need for analytical capability. Analysts have also cited poor leadership skills and lack of attention leading to the department investing in projects which end up wasting the tax payers money (Flynn, 2004). A study carried out on the employees within the department of homeland security, concluded that most of these employees are unmotivated (Flynn, 2004).There is therefore need for proper leadership. Even in the presence of reformed organizations and processes, leadership translates resources to the much needed results (Cole, 2003). Capable leaders are therefore essential in bringing change and ensuring that the set polices are observed and the goals met (Williams, 2008).

One of the major reasons for the mismanagement has been due to the fact that congress currently lacks a specific approach to deal with the issues which hinder the department from ensuring national security. These issues can only be eliminated through specific committee hearings with the relevant stakeholders and congress (Koempel, 2007). The house and senate budget committees in particular should be involved in determining the allocation of resources (GAO, 2007). The current absence of a budget function for this department is responsible for the historical wastage of public funds and should be addressed by providing a consistent spending budgetary allocation based on the mission and agency involved. This will allow monitoring of expenditure and prevent misappropriation of resources (Mueller, 2006).

The department of homeland security should also utilize the American population to achieve its mandates. One of the key factors why America has remained relatively safe from the action of fundamentalists has been the continued support of the government by local Muslim communities within US. These local Muslim communities have severally expressed distaste over the action of fundamentalists and have so far refused to support them denying them a link and access to the US (Kent, 2006). The government should therefore invest its resources in increasing this resilience to ensure that these avenues remain closed (Kent, 2006).

Then homeland security department debate has largely been steered by politicians and also took root in a time when the country was vulnerable. This implies that most Americans are still divided along partisan lines in this issue and therefore their arguments are based on the fear and insecurity that stemmed after the September terrorist attacks (Cole, 2003). The existing irregularities in the homeland security department have therefore remained unaddressed as politicians use them to gain their popularity and critique the government at the expense of the nation.

The homeland security department requires a new niche of operations. After the September 11 attacks the government implemented the homeland security department and invested largely in the operations to ensure security and also instill public confidence (Cole, 2003). After the resulting attacks of US on several countries, analysts expected the terrorist threats to increase (Kent, 2006). The situation has however remained controllable and there is no more need for government and politicians to feed on the hysteria resulting from September 11 attacks (Kent, 2006). The endless war on terrorism should therefore be brought down a notch and the government should concentrate on other more urgent local issues (Cole, 2003). To this regard the department of homeland security should develop a new niche to justify its continued existence and consumption of public resources from that of preventing possible terrorism to actually controlling or preventing crime in America

There are currently many gaps within the operations of the department of homeland security that require address. Among these issues is the need to integrate local governments into the federal efforts (Flynn, 2004). In the past terror attacks, state and local governments played very integral roles in preventing more terror attacks and dealing with the consequences (Jarret, 2006). The Federal government has however continued ignoring them and has chosen to focus all the support on the department of homeland security (Flynn, 2004). As a result these various avenues of possible terrorist attacks have been left open. Skyscrapers and subway stations can only be effectively protected by the local agencies (Kent, 2006). There are possible avenues of closing this gap.

The department of homeland security needs to integrate local agencies more on their operations. The privacy regulation within the homeland department also needs to be regulated (GAO, 2007).Although congress already passed the patriot act, which was meant to augment intelligence and law enforcement departments in October 2001, there is still reluctance towards information sharing (Williams, 2008).

To this end the government is already creating an information sharing center between various state and federal databases. The reluctance of sharing information between the homeland security department and local agencies may foster security threats (Jarret, 2006). The need of this integration was further demonstrated by the dismal response of the department of homeland security after hurricane Katrina (Williams, 2008). This performance has caused Americans to loose confidence in the operations of DHS and has resulted on increased doubt on their competence in the event of a possible attack.

While the department of homeland security continues to utilize public resources, there has been no effective standard of evaluation. Local departments are evaluated based on the number of responses in emergencies, arrests, convictions and the trends of crimes within their jurisdictions. The department of homeland security has remained largely unevaluated and has insisted on using the lack of terrorism as the only valid criterion for measurement (Shapiro, 2007). Analysts have however cited the absence of crime years before the September attack and concluded that the lack of international terrorism in the last nine years is not a sufficient evaluation standard (Shapiro, 2007).

The department of homeland security should therefore implement a more objective standard of measurement bearing in mind that an overall perfect attainment of security is simply not possible. This is largely due to the fact that the US is one of the most developed countries in terms of infrastructure and architecture. There are therefore not sufficient federal resources to monitor each of the subway stations, skyscrapers, bridges, shopping malls, schools, gas pipelines and power plants (GAO, 2007). This implies that the absence or the presence of vulnerability should also never be used as a standard of assessing the efficacy of the department of homeland security.

There is therefore need for a shift of focus from possible vulnerability response to actual threat assessment and response (Shapiro, 2007). Such an evaluation standard will ensure that the government comes to the realization that there are very few threats if any at all. Most of these vulnerabilities are based on suspicion and fear of vulnerabilities and end up wasting tax payers money. A good example would be the current need for the last government to focus resources towards unearthing nuclear terrorists. These efforts largely stemmed from speculation and fear of possible attacks on the US. While it is necessary to protect Americans from possible attacks, to date, there has been no proof that there is any group or individual intending to use nuclear power to attack the US.

In the meantime, the federal government and the department of homeland security utilize more than nine billion dollars annually to implement and deploy possible counterattacks (Whittaker et al., 2007). The annual spending for the department of homeland security has also continued to escalate as they continue to implement these protective measures (Williams, 2008). In 2007, the department received fifty eight billion dollars (Whittaker et al., 2007). What is disquieting is that none of this money was used to prevent or deal with any actual terrorist threat. The government and the department of homeland security therefore need to shift focus towards actual threat assessment and action as opposed to vulnerability analysis.

The department of homeland security does not currently have mechanisms to allow the secretary of defense to intervene on the issue of resource allocation between the different agencies (Williams, 2008). In addition, there are no formal mechanisms to allow the secretary to analyze the risks and needs of these agencies and possible alternatives (Koempel, 2007). To cultivate better management, there is need for the secretary to redefine the PPBE process and ensure that the new process mandates a discussion of priorities with heads of the different departments.

In addition the secretary should access and pass the integrated planning guide before implementation (Williams, 2008).This will allow the individual departments trade off on their needs based on the available resources. A study on the role of nonpartisan support agencies of congress concluded that these agencies are essential in providing critical information which may be used by legislators in designing better avenues of resource allocation (GAO, 2007). To this regard, there is therefore need to implement polices which will ensure that all stakeholders keenly study and assess the aims of the administrators of the departments of homeland security.

The department of homeland security needs to work with the necessary stakeholders towards implementing a sorely threat based security strategy. This will allow them to attain specific invulnerability and ensure that the available resources are used towards this end. This will also prevent the department from wasteful spending and embarking in other distracting and unnecessary activities (Koempel, 2007)

There is also need for the department of homeland security to set specific guidelines. These will ensure that there are clear cut guidelines on how much to spend and how far their efforts need to go (Koempel, 2007). A key issue in the debate has been on the issue of American privacy (Koempel, 2007). There is need for policy makers to set specific polices on how much civil liberties and rights the ordinary citizen is expected to give up and how much distortion is expected, to ensure that the department of homeland security fulfills its mandates. Setting up the specific mandates will also ensure that public resources are not wasted as in the case of the data mining fiasco.

Currently, the department of homeland security is operating on the assumption that the enemy can access the US anytime they wish. This is however not true. Intelligence reports over the last few years have shown that the resources and access of terrorists is limited (Jarret, 2006). Although these groups can still evolve and innovate new ways of attack, there is need for the department to focus on the consistency of these attacks and the political ideologies behind them. These ideologies have resulted to repeated attacks on what these fundamentalist groups view as symbols of American power. Therefore the strategies, strengths and weakness of terrorist groups can be deciphered by US intelligence. Since the US has already deciphered their intent and avenues, there is therefore no need for this multilayered system approach which targets everyone everywhere. Instead, it is more effective for the department of homeland security to implement specific regulations towards specific threats.

In conclusion, the department of homeland security is integral in providing protection against possible terrorist threats. However, at the moment the risk for these threats is very minimal and yet the department continues to utilize public resources in most cases at the expense of other security departments. There have also been various protests over the increasing bureaucracies and inefficiency portrayed by the department even in responding to natural disasters. Leadership has also remained a one of contention. There is therefore need for major reforms to ensure the transformation of the management of the department of homeland security and address these issues. To this regard, the government needs to set up a better operating approach for DHS and appoint visionary leaders. There is also need to inculcate a form of sufficiency within the department. This will require the department to set up specific priorities and pursue them justifying their utilization of tax payers money. There need for the department to focus on implementing appropriate assessment measures which will asses the strength of polices which have been implemented and allow reforms where necessary.  If properly implemented these reforms will transform the management of the department of homeland security providing an effective front against international and local threats while still ensuring proper utilization of public resources. .