Police Discretion Essay

Everyday police officers are faced with two difficult decision to make. Whether to intervene in the situation and how to intervene when they observe something suspicious or illegal happening. Police discretion is defined as having the power to make decision, and choosing how to respond to a given situation depending on the circumstances. Even though, there are law in place it is still up to a police officer own discretion. Ultimately, police officers have the choice to enforce the law and how to carry it out in public. In the text book “Policing America” by Ken Peak he states that there are two criminal law in discretion. “the formality and the reality. The formality is found in the statute books and opinions of appellate courts; the reality is found in the practices of enforcement officers” (82). He also, demonstrate when should each criminal law be use. However, there are negative and positive aspects of police discretion. Also, there are pros and cons of allowing patrol officers to make discretionary decisions.

With such a broad volume of discretion apparently in nearly every aspect of police decision making what strengths does this level of discretion have? Police work and the work environment require the use of discretion. Decisions must be made very quickly, usually without time for input from another source. This is despite the fact that a bureaucratic structure exists for the department as a whole. Moreover, communities cannot agree on what constitutes criminal behavior or the level to which criminal behavior should be sanctioned or ignored. A prime example is that of the skid-rows areas. The approach taken by most police in dealing with the skid-row “problem” or

To illustrate this imagine that two men get into a fight in Times Square. A nearby police officer notices the disturbance and attempts to separate the two men instead of arresting them on the spot. In this hypothetical situation the police officer needed to use discretion to decide how to best handle the situation. At times however, police discretion causes more problems than it resolves. There have been reports of police being called to a scene were a husband is being extremely aggressive towards his wife. The police feel as the situation that is occurring is not severe, and therefore leave the scene. The next day, the police station receives a call that there was a homicide. As they arrive to the scene, the police realized it was the same couple from day before.” The report details in-depth reviews of 84 cases in which 135 people died, including some instances of homicide-suicide — cases when abusers killed victims as well as themselves. In 48 of those 84 cases, police had previously responded to a domestic-violence call”- (WA Report: Criminal-Justice System Fails Domestic-Violence Victims). At times the unfettered use of discretion can lead to the denial of citizen rights, at times the unfettered use of discretion can lead to the denial of citizen rights, and cause many flaws in the justice system; for example, many communities might have different definitions of what constitutes criminal behavior or what

The police are our nation’s most visible law enforcement entity. We see them driving and walking our streets every day. They are responsible for the safety and well-being of the people. In some instances, they have to make life altering decisions in a blink of an eye. Because circumstances are always changing, police officers are given a decision-making power called police discretion. It is up to the officer to use this given power for right or wrong.

Police officers are faced each day with a vast array of situations with which they must deal. No two situations they encounter are ever the same, even when examines a large number of situations over an extended period of time. The officers are usually in the position of having to make decisions on how to handle a specific matter alone, or with little additional advice and without immediate supervision. This is the heart of police discretion. As we shall find, the exercise of discretion by police has benefits and problems associated with such exercise. The unfettered use of discretion can

One important work which highlighted some of the shortcomings of officer discretion was a survey sponsored by the American Bar Foundation. Among other things that survey noted in the 1960’s a national crisis arose with certain problems relating to law enforcement. The survey noted that the possibility existed that discretionary decision making could represent a pattern of discrimination, it did say, on the other hand, the survey was unable to say definitively rather discrimination existed in

Discretion is defined as the authority to make a decision between two or more choices (Pollock, 2010). More specifically, it is defined as “the capacity to identify and to document criminal and noncriminal events” (Boivin & Cordeau, 2011). Every police officer has a great deal of discretion concerning when to use their authority, power, persuasion, or force. Depending on how an officer sees their duty to society will determine an officer’s discretion. Discretion leads to selective enforcement practices and may result in discrimination against certain groups of people or select individuals (Young, 2011). Most police officer discretion is exercised in situations with individuals (Sherman, 1984).

Discretion is not doing as you please. Discretion is bounded by norms. The future of policing as a profession depends upon whether discretion can be put to good use. Two problems impending police professionalization, however, in that there are few uncontroversial areas in police work, than in other professions. Sometimes the public wants no enforcement, and other times they want strict enforcement. Citizens will scream false arrest in the first case, and some groups may file a write of mandamus in the second case.

Officers back each other up and protect one another from dangerous situations. While the code can help protect officers for safety reasons, it can also protect the officers who violate the laws (Skolnick, 2008). Police discretion is the power given to an officer in which allows them to make a judgement call as to whether they will follow police procedures or dismiss the action (Myhill & Johnson, 2016). As with the “code of silence” police use their discretion or what they would call “professional curtsey” by no enforcing the laws against fellow officers (Wetendorf & Davis,

The amount of force an officer use is influenced by police discretion (Wilson 1968). Discretion is when an individual use their own judgement to decide what the best course of action to take is.

What is police misconduct? It can be defined as any action performed by a law enforcement officer that is unethical by established employment guidelines, unconstitutional, or a crime with in itself. When people hear the term “police misconduct” they automatically think of a police officer using unnecessary force against a civilian. While that is a form of police misconduct it is not only form. Throughout this paper I will bring light to the many types of police misconduct that can happen in the law enforcement industry.

In the criminal justice system, discretion is often performed by the police, prosecutors, judges and juries, correctional officials and

Today, police discretion is a very important aspect to the criminal justice field. There are different substances where discretion is not discipline enough or not monitored enough even though having discretion is not always bad. There are still ways to abuse it and today police officers have their own way of using police discretion for different situations. Discretion can be defined as someone having the power or authority to make a decision based on what they feel should be done in a certain situation. Police officers are taught how to handle certain situations according the law. But when the officer is on duty no one is there to make sure that they are making the right decisions that follow the law and according to the law, there are not set guidelines in the law for police discretion which give the police officer an advantage. Discretion is used by police officers when they are facing a decision with a bunch of results that could handle the situation but the officer has control to pick which result they would want to choose.

Guidelines need to be set so that officers continue to incorporate and maintain the concept of community policing. Therefore, there must be information available to inform reader that police discretion not only encompasses use of police profiling, responses to domestic violence, or choices in acceptance of gratuities but discretionary decision to use force.

Police discretion by definition is the power to make decisions of policy and practice. Police have the choice to enforce certain laws and how they will be enforced. “Some law is always or almost always enforced, some is never or almost never enforced, and some is sometimes enforced and sometimes not” (Davis, p.1). Similarly with discretion is that the law may not cover every situation a police officer encounters, so they must use their discretion wisely. Until 1956, people thought of police discretion as “taboo”. According to http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/ 205/205lect09.htm, “The attitude of police administrators was that any deviation from accepted procedures was extralegal and probably a source of corruption.