Police Discretion Essay Example
Police Discretion
April 20th , 2008
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 first started out police discretion was rejected by many people and agencies saying that anything that was not in the rule book was extralegal or a form of police corruption. As the years went on it became something that agencies could deal and could use for common good if used properly and effectively. Police discretion however is not as simple as it seems. With community policing becoming such a big part of law enforcement now and day’s police discretion is an essential part to community policing actually working. Throughout this paper I am going to try and give you a better definition of discretion and also describe the many forms that comes along with it. Furthermore I am going to discuss the common areas where police discretion is found and also give you some of the causes and reasons why police discretion occurs. Also I will give some policy alternatives to try and solve and control the problem of police discretion. First I would like to try and give you a clear definition of discretion and also talk about the many different forms that it comes in. The definition that I found to be most logical and clear was that of Kenneth Davis a criminal justice author. His definition read: the making of choices from a number of
April 20th , 2008
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 first started out police discretion was rejected by many people and agencies saying that anything that was not in the rule book was extralegal or a form of police corruption. As the years went on it became something that agencies could deal and could use for common good if used properly and effectively. Police discretion however is not as simple as it seems. With community policing becoming such a big part of law enforcement now and day’s police discretion is an essential part to community policing actually working. Throughout this paper I am going to try and give you a better definition of discretion and also describe the many forms that comes along with it. Furthermore I am going to discuss the common areas where police discretion is found and also give you some of the causes and reasons why police discretion occurs. Also I will give some policy alternatives to try and solve and control the problem of police discretion. First I would like to try and give you a clear definition of discretion and also talk about the many different forms that it comes in. The definition that I found to be most logical and clear was that of Kenneth Davis a criminal justice author. His definition read: the making of choices from a number of