The Recognition-Primed Decision Making Model

The media has scrutinized the use of force even more recently. Recordings of officers using force (weather excessive or not) become uploaded to the web and many individuals quickly jump to conclusions. Police use of “force” is up to the discretion of each individual police officer, and with each action a multitude of consequences can occur. The public often gets enraged after a court justifies the use of force, but often individuals do not have the full facts or understand how the justice system works. The outcomes of some use of force cases, many individuals are asking for transparency of agencies. Policy makers are often quick to react to satisfy the public by changing police policy.

In this essay a discussion will be explored about the benefits and problems associated with police use of discretion. Which current policing strategies have the most potential for controlling officer discretion and providing accountability, and which have the least, and why is that the case? And finally, how might these issues impact the various concerns facing law enforcement today?

People should make decisions every day, some of those decisions are easy to make, while others are quite difficult to implement. An appropriately combined and organized decision-making process will help to control this issue and bring a positive outcome for those involved. The decision-making process may become challenging for people due to “the lack of structure and entail risk, uncertainly and conflict” (Bateman and Snell, 2012, p. 86). That is why people trying to make important personal or professional decisions should have an appropriate model to follow in order to avoid these challenges. Bateman and Snell identified six steps or stages of decision-making process

The unearthing problems and regulations of policing by discretion of the law enforcement actor is the topic of this article. The author, Katherine Beckett, who is a Law Professor at the University of Washington, identifies the origin of the ideology behind police discretion, along with the methods of application, problems, and possible solutions in her article. Many changes developed in the law enforcement world as a result of this beginning. Katherine Beckett identifies those changes and the effects of the changes on society, shown through sociological studies. A comparison is made of events in which police discretion has a significant effect, such as the war on drugs, the development of police regulatory organizations and the growing need

The ability to review the totality of the evidence of an incident after it has occurred allows individuals to formulate fully informed decisions. Subsequently, when police officers deal with situations throughout their shift, they are often forced to make a hasty decision without the benefit of all the information. Hence, the majority of law enforcement decisions are without the benefit of incomplete information, yet overall their decisions are just and fair. Moreover, law enforcement is strongly encouraged to wear body-worn cameras at every event, which everyone uses to judge whether their choices are right or wrong. Personal experience has shown that the camera footage of the majority of the videos I review provides only a portion of what truly occurred at the

In the post 9/11 environment, one of the key issues for law enforcement is meeting the threats of all hazards and crimes (Carter, 2010). Officers must now worry about terrorism in addition to traditional crime. With this additional requirement, officers must now have access to more information, as well as the means to send it through the intelligence process. Management is now responsible for supervising a new task, providing policies to outline officers’ roles within that task, and ensuring proper functioning of the entire process (Carter, 2010). Should these officers and managers not understand their new function, or should they be unable to obtain the tools, resources, and information sharing cooperation to do so, the new environment then proves to provide a complex task and insufficient means to meet it – therefore holding them back.

Every day our police departments work very hard to keep us safe using a variety of procedures that most everyday people don’t know about. These procedures can include DUI checkpoints, interrogations, fingerprinting, and indictments. This paper will go over some of these procedures in a particular case that involved so many different ones. The case I will be discussing is the Boston Marathon Bombing, The local, state, and federal agents worked together around the clock to identify, locate, and apprehend the suspects responsible for the bombing. Also in the paper I will go over what I think the police could have done better or what I would have changed in the situation, then I will critically analyze and debrief the situation.

Since the beginning of police work in America, the system has changed from disorganized chaos into a well structured and rather complex network of communication, response efforts, and detection of lawless behavior. From the creation of the town watch to the transformation of the first police force in the colonies to the lawlessness of the old west and the efforts to revive efficient police work, America has been ever advancing its protection of those who live in the White House, the suburbs, the slums, and even those struggling on the streets. The History of Policing in America is not derived from one origin of time but rather taking the highest qualities of protection from within itself and countries of both friend and foe.

In this paper I will discuss police discretion and the use of these discretionary powers in the law enforcement workplace. I will explore the mythical aspects of police discretionary powers and the source of this myth. I will further discuss the control of discretionary authority. I will name instances of law enforcement officials using their discretionary powers to enforce laws and why the exercised this privilege.

Walker, S., & Katz, C. M. (2011). The police in America: An introduction (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Furthermore, police professionals make judgements based on what is worthy of a strict warning or a fine. Based on these subjective judgments by police officers, many scholars claim that the work of law enforcement agents is inherently discretionary, stated once by a Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing known as Simon Bronitt (Simon, 325). For centuries, in the U.S., the possession of power has continuously been exploited in manipulative and scheming manners, that seem difficult to be proven and/ or ceased. Although, there are ethical police officers who foster impartiality, there are more disadvantages of discretionary power than advantages.

The field of police work is a complex discipline. It is assuredly not as simple as “catch the bad guys.” Policing and criminal justice as a whole have come a long way in their slightly less than two century history. And yet, comparatively speaking, it is still considered a relatively new field, one that continues to grow, stretch, and change. Despite the fact that large volumes of research have been done studying varying aspects of police work, there still exists massive gaps in solutions to issues facing the police and criminal justice initiatives.

Law enforcement is filled with decision making. Law enforcement leaders make critical operational decisions everyday. Decisions are made at the discretion of officers and no matter what the decision is, officers are questioned if it was the right one. Whether to intervene, and if the decision to intervene is made, and how best to intervene are parts of decision making made by a police officer. Deciding whether and how to intervene can take an officer in many different directions, and he or she must be prepared for and trained to handle each one effectively. Officers conceive discretion either in the letter of the law which they issue citations for every infraction or the spirit of the law and looks at what the law intends and realizes that from time to time arrests and citations may not meet with the law’s intent. The reality of policing is that officers frequently must make decisions and often the law and an officer’s decision correspond, but not always. The law and the officer’s decision can at times be at odds with one another.

However, decisions should not be made based off of history or patterns from the past. Furthermore, in decision making police professionals should have a plan of attack especially if there is a dramatic change occurs without warning signs (Swanson, Territo, Taylor, 2012). We must have forward thinking in this process to develop strategies to cope with the problem instead of just ignoring them as a whole. The next common error in decision making is oversimplification when they tend to handle the symptom of a problem rather than tackling the whole problem within itself (Swanson, Territo, Taylor, 2012). Reasoning being if we don’t get to the root of the problem the problem will still exist and possibly could escalate. Combing it over with a toothpick comb is like patching it with a ban aide. The next error in decision making is overreliance on one’s

As individuals, we make decisions throughout the day weighing the cause and effect, cost and benefit, risk and impact of our actions on ourselves and upon others. When taken to a larger scale, as the manager of a team, the CEO of a corporation, or the leader of a nation, the decisions exponentially increase in impact and importance.