Police Decision-Making Process Analysis

The effort to analyze and expand on existing knowledge on the decision-making behaviour of police officers has been assessed and documented in many different studies, however Bonner reveals six themes related to officer arrest decision-making and the influence of working rules that are regulated by precise frameworks. When police and citizens endure and encounter each other they meet on a social stage were the citizen’s interaction is based on their status and capability to challenge the police (Bonner 2014:494). The decision-making behaviour police engage in is ultimately determined from two different statuses. Social status and situational status. Social status is visibly present in all police encounters (race, sex, age, social class) and
With efforts to expand the common knowledge we already know about police decision-making the author makes great emphasis on current social facts and themes that are prominent in the encounter between police and citizens upon deciding on making an arrest. When we critically assess the theory that is provided we are introduced to decision-making factors that are visibly present. Such factors include degree of injury, age of involved parties, drug/alcohol involvement and etc. These factors of course are crucial to police officers to construct how to decide on an arrest, however, they fail to consider factors that may also be considered crucial to the decision if an arrest should take place. These factors include any history of mental illnesses or derangement, criminal records, correlation of previous involvement in crime and other social factors that are non-visible such as family life and economical status. When factors such as these are incorporated they broaden the scope of police decision-making and have potential for police to contain a proper amount of information before they conduct an arrest. An issue that may be resulted from the theory of police basing an arrest on certain reoccurring themes can result in a form of unfair bias. When the certain themes of age and injury for say are red-flags for police to make an arrest it
examine the role of working rules that define what officers consider as suspicious people, situations, and places. Suspiciousness has been recently identified as one of the most crucial aspects for the conjuring of police-citizen interaction (Stroshine et al., 2008, pg.315). What police consider as suspicious incidents is relatable to the critique of Bonner’s theory of themes that prompt officers to make arrests during citizen-encounters. They play an important role in the interactions between police and the public as it determines whether the citizen gets processed throught the criminal system. It is brought about in the theory of suspiciousness that the importance of time and place, the importance of appearance, the importance of information, the importance of behavior are contributing factors to police approaching citizens who they believe are engaging in criminal activity. For example, the focus of individuals who seem out of place, cars who go under the speed limit, individuals hanging out in areas not dominated by their race and ethnicity are all examples of what draws police to believe suspicious activity is taking place (Stroshine et al., 2008, pg.324). Police disregard the fact that they are stigmatizing individuals who fit these descriptions assuming that they are involved in criminal activity. This suspiciousness then results in the police-citizen encounter that Bonner addresses where the themes that police use to decide on an arrest (age,