Police Discretion Essay

1314 Words6 Pages
Tray Essix 17 September 2012 ENG 101 B.Dover The True Meaning of Police Discretion Police Discretion to me 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. 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". The attitude of police administrators was that any deviation from accepted procedures was extralegal and probably a source of corruption. When Police Discretion was finally exposed, people called for its abolishment, and police administrators sought a clampdown on discretion (administrative rulemaking). The use of discretion is not necessarily an unpleasant thing as long as it is used properly and it is not being abused. Adequate mechanisms for control of the exercise of that discretion are also a requisite for more rational decision making. If discretion implies a lack of control - that is, the freedom to choose from among available alternatives completely unfettered by constraints of law or policy - then the idea of controlled discretion may seem to be a self-contradiction. Discretion can be used in many different situations. If a police officer uses his/her discretionary power correctly, not only will it help the police officer in their situation, it will help the general community as well. There are three causes of discretion: offender variables, situation variables, and system variables. Offender variables deal with such things as, how sometimes police take complaints from adults more seriously than complaints from juveniles; how there is sometimes racial

More about Police Discretion Essay

Open Document