Police Discretion Essay

From a criminological perspective discretion can be defined as the authority granted by law to agencies and officials to act on their own considered judgement and conscience in certain situations; and each area of the legal system (judges, parliament and law enforcement) has its own discretion. Police discretion is the ability granted by the legal system to police offices, in certain situations, to act in a manner that allows authorities to make responsible decisions and individual choices or judgments

Police are what is known as street-level bureaucrats. This basically means that police are civil servants working on the “street level” in direct contact with the general public enforcing the laws of the local, state and federal law. Police officers work alone or with a partner patrolling the streets within their beat, therefor they are given a lot of discretion with their title. Discretionary judgment is necessary for a well functioning police department, but it must be demonstrated properly

Today, police discretion is a very important aspect to the criminal justice field. There are different substances where discretion is not discipline enough or not monitored enough even though having discretion is not always bad. There are still ways to abuse it and today police officers have their own way of using police discretion for different situations. Discretion can be defined as someone having the power or authority to make a decision based on what they feel should be done in a certain situation

Police Discretion Discretion, uncertainly, and inefficiently are rampant and essential in criminal justice. Nobody expects perfection. That would neither be good nor fair. Justice is a sporting event in which playing fair is more important than winning. Law enactment, enforcement, and administration all involve trading off the possibility of perfect outcomes for security against the worst outcomes. Policing is the most visible part of this: employees on the bottom have more discretion than

Assignment 2 Discretion can be defined as the availability of choice of options or actions. We all use discretion each and every day with all the decisions we make in our day to day lives. With that being said police also use discretion but theirs have the ability to change people’s lives on the daily basis. They have to make those decisions each and every day not knowing how it will affect the person’s life. Discretion is something that is a very necessary part of police work. One of the reason

system, researchers have shifted their focus to the levels of discretion that police officers have when it comes to them enforcing the laws in which they have sworn to uphold. With the administrators of the criminal justice system being held to the bureaucratic regulations of the system, the police officers themselves often gets a lot of leverage as to the way that they perform their jobs. Because of the power that the police have, discretion has raised a lot of concern to those researching this tool

Police Discretion is one of the many tool officers have a choice to use when making decision in enforcing the law. Officer have the option to use discretion were the officers see fit. They do not have to issue a citation or arrest in many cases a warning many be justified. Many of the outcomes could be determine by several factors which include the subjects attitude, the crime and the person past history. In some cases, a subject’s social status and financial status in the community have also have

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? Police behavior is different across all communities. In fact, how police react to combat crime is affected by the management style of the various police administrators. Also, local

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

Police play a critical role in our legal system and form part of the executive arm of government. Police have a range of roles. According to Fitzroy Legal Service (2016) ‘the core functions of the police include enforcing the law, keeping the peace and protecting life and property.’ In order to maintain these functions, I believe the role of discretion is key to exercising how and when to invoke the law (Broadhurst & Davies 2009:2). Discretion is defined by ‘the means by which actors in the criminal