Discretionary Authority In The Criminal Justice System

Criminal Justice Authority Evaluation
The criminal justice system has always operated under discretionary authority. This includes law enforcement, the court system and corrections. Police officers enjoy the benefit of whether to charge for small infractions and whether an incident requires force to be applied. The court system uses discretionary authority in sentencing of the guilty. The department of corrections uses discretionary authority in the everyday running of the prison system, as they are the rulers of their community. Within this paper all of these fields will be evaluated and how the roles of a civilian oversight committee will fit in. There is a growing awareness of how complex police work is. This has come from an examination
Judging can be described as Main, (2006) “the art or science of making discrete choices among competing courses of action” (p. 4). In order for judges to rule fairly and equitably they must have the discretion to practice any lawful route. The core of the judicial function is the right to exercise discretion. Judges have the discretion to allow certain courses of actions such as mistrials, motion to exclude, testimony of certain witnesses (whether to exclude them or not) and sentencing of the accused. A judge will make choices at their discretion with the help of different options. The judicial system puts their trust in the judges to make informed and sound judgments. A judge can be persuaded by the arguments of the court advocates. A judge is in the higher position and must see, evaluate and hear the testimony with firsthand knowledge. There are situations that a judge will not use their own discretion to make a decision but will rely solely on the testimony and there will be only a yea or nay decision (Main,
A civilian oversight committee will oversee the “conduct on behalf of the public” (Stone & Merrick, 2002, p. 1). This is to correct or curb those that abuse their power. The civilian oversight committee will look into any questions of the abuse of power in the arrest, the questioning and the use of force, lethal or non-lethal. Some think that civilian oversight should go even farther into policing. Not just the patrolman but the higher ups in the organization also. Police chiefs have the discretion as to whether to punish or withhold punishment of an officer that has been accused of abusing their power. Civilian oversight committees are being considered to look more deeply into the supervisors that are abusing their power (Stone & Merrick,