Discretion Of The Criminal Justice System

Discretion is the eminence of once behavior or the way of speaking in order to avoid any offensive occurrence or speaking up any private issues or information in public. It is the self-determination for someone to choose or think what should be better to be done in particular circumstances. Especially for a judge, a public official or other private party has the authority to make decisions on any legal matters or other big official subjects. Thus, a person who is authorized with the power of discretion often thinks about how to apply the given supremacy.

Chapter 9 focuses on special topics, which reviews the five present and controversial issue in the criminal justice system. Out of all 5 of these issues I think that the use of confidential informants in war on drug is the most harmful to our nation’s correctional system and should be eliminated. The reason I think that the use of confidential informants should be eliminated drug war on drugs is because the use of CI’s frequently have negative consequence on the war on drugs (Austin & Irwin, 2012). The first example, is that CI’s are not appropriately screened and supervised, which causes innocent individuals to be arrest. In my opinion, I think that if CI’s are going to be used then they should be supervised at all time because the lack

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

Question 1 Define discretion and then discuss where it is found (applied) in the CJ system. Discretion refers to the freedom to decide on the right cause of action based on the personal judgment. In the criminal justice system, discretion plays a very important role in administering justice. The stakeholders including the police officer, prosecutor, judges, correction officer, and probation officer amongst others in many instances use discretion in determining the next course of actions. The arresting officer uses discretion to decide to follow up on an issue, the prosecutor uses discretion to determine if the case will go for hearing or offer a plea bargain deal.

So DACA affects a many different immigrants from all parts of the world not just the Hispanic population. To really get an understanding of how the current public policy DACA has come into play. We first must know its origins.

Police discretion is a decision made by an officer whether to enforce the law or to let the offense go as a warning. An easy example of police discretion is when a person gets pulled over for a traffic violation, something like speeding. The officer could either let you off with a warning or he or she could give you a ticket. Depending on how the person is behaving the officer will use some discretion, if you're mean with a attitude the officer will probably give you hefty ticket. If you are a well mannered law abiding citizen who normally doesn't get into trouble the officer will hopefully let you go with a warning.

Discretion in policing and the court system is a necessary and unavoidable facet of criminal justice work, yet it is still very controversial. Discretion exists when courtroom actors (police officers, attorneys, judges) have the flexibility to choose an appropriate response to a situation. Police discretion is defined as “The opportunity of law enforcement officers to exercise choice in their daily activities” (Nowacki, 2015). This means that actors with a great deal of discretion at their disposal may allow biases to affect their decision-making. These decisions lead to important implications throughout the criminal justice process, especially in the courtroom. The process begins with the decision to arrest by a law enforcement officer in the field. Once the case is forwarded to the prosecuting attorney, multifarious avenues of discretionary decisions are available to resolve a case. Potential issues that could arise and that are ever-present in everyday policing include racism, sexism and socialism (Miller, 2015). These issues ultimately have a negative affect on the criminal justice process, leading civilians to not trust the one process and actors that are there to help them. While discretion should play a role in the actions a courtroom actor takes and cannot be eliminated entirely, instead it should be limited and controlled throughout the criminal justice environment so that citizens can once again trust the process and so that there will be no disparities.

The criminal justice filed is huge, people who have a career in criminal justice they must have a mature discretion to make a right choice at a right time. There are stereotypes of branches in criminal justice system, but all requires a mature discretion, authority and power to serve the nation and to provide the equality and rights for all citizens. Criminal justice professionals ought to make an ethical, lawful decision because they rule many citizens’ life; they have the right to take off freedom of individual. Criminal justice has diverse positions such as police, Judicial, and lawyers. These positions require a mature discretion as well.

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.

Within the criminal justice system, officials abuse their power. The officials of the justice system have a duty to protect and perform their duties with unbiased decision making. The abuse of power jeopardizes people’s lives who are not able to sustain oneself and their families. Some people do not understand that poorer people find themselves in jail more and once a person is released, that person is subjected to return to jail for the amount of money owed to the state. There are many obstacles for the poor, especially those of color. People of color are treated unfairly in the justice system, from the arrest, the sentencing, and the release. The criminal justice system is supposed to be just but that is not the case. The criminal justice system allows for the police, public defenders, and judges to bend the laws and not be punished for their actions or that apologizes can fix the wrong that has been done. This paper will discuss the abuse of power from the justice system and the solutions to rectify the damages.

One aspect of the criminal justice system that has been debated for many years is that of police discretion. Police discretion is defined as the ability of a police officer, a prosecutor, a judge, and a jury to exercise a degree of personal decision making in deciding who is going to be charged or punished for a crime and how they are going to be punished. This basically is saying that there are situations when these law enforcement officers have to use their own personal beliefs and make choices coming from their own morals and ethics. The subject of police discretion was discovered in 1956 by the American Bar Foundation and has been an important problem in criminal justice since that time. When it

Police play an important role in society; their main role is to maintain law and order. However, police sometimes fail at their role, resulting in a pressure to reform how they do their job. Discretion is at the forefront of why a reform within policing is needed. Discretion is the freedom for an officer to decide what should be done in a particular situation. For police these can be things such as deciding to arrest or stop based on their race, the area of the situation, prior record, gender, personal bias, and other factors. Discretion is not always good, with this discretion police are often recorded making unlawful arrest and unlawful stop and first. Sometimes this can be the blame for things such

I equate judicial discretion to being a “double-edged sword”, so to speak. Judges, like the rest of the population, are human and have flaws. They are many times elected to their positions and are holding to their constituent base, especially in an election year. If one judge is conservative in nature, he/she may rule on the higher end of the sentencing scale as opposed to a more liberal judge.

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).