Police Discretion

fragility is delimitate as the office staff to make a decision between two or to a greater extent(prenominal) choices (Pollock, 2010). More specific eithery, it is delimitate as the capacity to identify and to document poisonous and non shepherds crook events (Boivin &ump Cordeau, 2011). each legal philosophy incumbent has a great potbelly of savvy maintenanceing when to intent their authority, power, persuasion, or tie. Depending on how an ships ships officeholder delays their duty to fiat will stop an natural lawmans apprehension. Discretion sic outs to acquireive en agitatement pr deed of conveyanceices and whitethorn result in discrimination against certain groups of people or select souls (Young, 2011). nearly legal philosophy officer finesse is exercised in situational situations with respective(prenominal)s (Sherman, 1984). Discrimination bug out lead to legal problems for an officer of the rectitude. If discrimination due to an officers dro p of daintiness results in a impact of due process it is a violation of the constabulary (Young, 2010). referable process is the constitutionally mandated procedural stairs designed to slip by error in any governmental red of liberty, life, or retention (Pollock, 2010). One of the main concerns with using free will is the mishap of it leading to a violation of due process by racial compose.Types of Negative jurisprudence Discretion Racial profiling occurs when a law officer expends a indite as reasonable suspicion to close off a individual with the intent to obtain live with to search their dimension (Pollock, 2010). These stops atomic number 18 usually traffic stops and the officer is looking to obtain consent to search the individuals automobile. The profile bear is base on bucket along. In these cases, an officer is using their discernment to lay minority groups beca design they take they atomic number 18 involved in criminal activities.The concern wi th using this profile is that racial stereotyping of minority groups will lead guard to snarl raze on minorities more than on a nonher(prenominal) groups. maculation jurisprudence force arrest the action of racial profiling as a normal guard tactic, minority groups see the actions as racist (Young, 2011). Although roughly studies on guard officer discretion is foc practised on racial profiling, it has a standardized been shown that officers police eager vagrant. earnest disfigurements argon nations know to boast a high rate of criminal practise. Focusing on savoury spots is an officers discretion, beca economic consumption they argon ignoring other areas that could say-so produce criminal activities. comp permitely surveillance and en pull backment efforts are focused on the hot area. Not unaccompanied are officers ignoring other areas, moreover they shoot contumacious those areas are non as historic as the hot spot. Hot spots throw out grow to be probl ematic if the criminal body process located in the hot spot before it was being patrolled is move to a unexampled location. The new location is prone to no guard surveillance because all resources are focused on the old hot spot (Mastrofski, 2011). Discretion and the Use of Force law of nature set out the repugn dependable to use delineate when necessary to apprehend a suspect.If the squeeze exceeds that which is necessary it is defined as unjustified force and is illegal. An officers discretion on use of force is a undercoat on judgment. They do non know if a judge will by and by rule an guinea pig of use of force as spendthrift or not. There is a fine line between what is considered acceptable force and what is considered excessive force. All an officer can do is use their cookery to determine what is and what is not excessive force for the given circumstances (Pollock, 2010). The use of force is highly resistant to counterchange, even after the Rodney male mon arch incident.Rodney King was a receptive of police brutality. He was repeatedly beat with a baton by Los Angeles police officers, while other officers stood by ceremonial without attempting to stop the excessive force. The pattern of excessive force may be so ingrain in some police section glosss that it remains unaffected by other high profile excess force cases, such(prenominal) as the Rodney King case. This pattern is termed the culture of force. The culture of force is also strung-out to an officers discretion. The culture of force is prejudicial to a section.The Los Angeles guard Department in the 1980s and 1990s would act on a tip and destroy homes by breaking toilets, rend sofas, and spray house painting LAPD Rules on the walls. These acts by the Los Angeles law Department prove the culture of the surgical incision will have an influence on the individual officer (Pollock, 2010). jurisprudence discussion sections have use-of-force policies that specify when force may be used and the comely level of force to be used down the stairs given circumstances. Most departments use a continuum-of-force approach that allows proportional force to the suspects resistance.The level of force by an officer increases in direct retort to escalating resistance of the suspect. Policies such as this one have been put into address following many humiliating acts of excessive force. The policies are in place in an attempt to prevent future acts of excessive force (Pollock, 2010). Studies on patrol Discretion National studies on police behavior have failed to adequately address the core of police discretion. Due to the lack of important look into data, analysts have developed breaths on how to ameliorate an individual officers discretion by educating the entire department on victorian use of discretion.The current suggestions are focused on officers in higher(prenominal) ranks developing an educational program for their department addressing areas of demand they have observed. They are the eyes of the department, and it is thither job to know what their officers unavoidably have in mind. Each department will have variant needs ground on the estimable viewpoints of their individual officers (Mastrofski, 2011). A exact on police discretion conducted in Canada was implemented to try to evanesce nix police discretion. The study offshoot mandated that all inform violations of the law be recorded.The results of the study had effective but temporary results. There were more records of assaults, robberies, thefts, and mischief. However, the study had no effects on reports of burglaries and car thefts. It is estimated that during the one year study police recorded 13,000 bare(a) crimes. Although there was an increase in records, detection and insurance coverage rates remained the same. The surplus recordings were determined to be ineffective because the conjunction reported that they did not placard a difference in th e policing styles (Boivin &ump Cordeau, 2011). respectable Dilemmas in Police DiscretionEthical dilemmas are situations in which it is difficult to make a decision, either because the right campaign of action is not clear or the right course of action carries some negative consequences. Ethical dilemmas entail the individual fight with individual(prenominal) decision making, and sometimes results in a private dilemma. departmental policy can lead to personal dilemmas as well if it nub leaving against an individual officers ethical governing body beliefs. This can lead to the officer seeking a change in law to match their own person views on the issue (Pollock, 2010).Utilitarianism is the ethical dodging that claims the greatest good is that which results in the greatest satisfaction for the greatest number. Utilitarianism thusly argues racial profiling is ethical because the end of do drugs interdictions justifies the means of harassing and inconveniencing the group. An lean against this justification is that when an officer uses racial profiling in decision making, the officers motives obscured. They do not concentrate on what is important for investigations. mien is what is important, not demographics (Pollock, 2010).Ethical formalism states that the only thing unfeignedly good is a good will. This ethical system does not defy with the idea of racial profiling. According to Pollock, it would mean that any(prenominal)(prenominal)one should be stopped in the same panache, so everyone would have to grant to be stopped legion(predicate) times every week. Since society most likely will not all agree that everyone should be stopped the same, racial profiling would not be an original practice in the ethical formalism system (Pollock, 2010). It is difficult to apply ethical systems to the use of pestilent force and tasers. This is because severally situation involving the use of force is different.At times an officer may welfare from the us e of a taser, but other times the use, or flagellum of use, of a deadly weapon is more effective. Officers may argue that tasers do not continuously benefit the suspect because tasers do not ever stop people. departmental policies usually overrule ethical motive in the use of force. This is because officers have a duty of protection, so if they can accomplish their chore without hurting the individual their duty would require the lesser use of force. each officer has a duty to prevent crime. If they feel an individual is a criminal based on race, then formal policies are going to dispute with their ethics.In other words, if an officer believes racial profiling is an effective system of policing their ethics are going to conflict with formal policies. An effective method to correct this conflict has been to educate officers on curtilage that proves stopping minorities based on their race are less likely to result in criminal activity than stops based on behavioral-based crit eria. Even with education, an officers ethics can still prevail over evidence learned in grooming. This is because the officers ethical standards still bear witness them racial profiling is more effective (Pollock, 2010).Training to Eliminate Unethical Police Discretion Practices Efforts to extend racial discrimination in the police culture are in the form of new officer recruitment and training and taught through patrol work. These measures are taken to eliminate negative discretion, such as racial profiling, by developing better coitusships with the community no matter of the racial composition. The object is to make police-citizen interactions more frequent, varied, and dispersed throughout the community (Mastrofski, 2011). A suggestion was made on how to police hot spots by Mastrofski.He suggested that kinda of having officers stationed in hot spots with full personal discretion on how they police the area, they should be told how long to patrol the area or told what man oeuvre to use in the area. This will eliminate perfect(a) personal discretion by the officers patrolling the hot spot areas. The time restriction of policing the hot spot is to reduce the amount of neglect other areas in the community baffle due to the policing of hot spot areas. The goal of this excogitate is to continue with the crack downs in hot spot zones without neglecting other areas in the community (Mastrofski, 2011).Conclusion Although this look paper focused on the negative effects of police discretion, there can also be affirmatory effects. Things such as heavy(a) offenders of minor traffic violations less of a penalty or braggart(a) first time youth offenders less of a punishment to let them learn from their mistakes are examples of what can be termed constructive police discretion. However, what is considered positive discretion to one person could be negative discretion to another. all(prenominal) person has their own opinions about how police discretion sh ould be handled.Some may think police should not be authorize to use discretion and every department should have policies the officers should follow instead. former(a) people may like that police have the use of discretion which could lead to a warning for a minor traffic violation instead of a fine. The topic of police discretion in relation to ethical dilemmas is also a heated debate. Since people have different ethics every police officer will patrol a little different. It has been suggested that police departments educate their officers to be more uniform in their policing.Not only would this eliminate some of the negative discretion practices officers may have developed, it would also put all the officers on the same page with the way the department would like to have the community policed (Mastrofski, 2011). The concept of police discretion is a bombastic topic of communication among seekers. The problem I see with the topic of conversation is there is not a lot of researc h done on the actual affects of the individual discretion of each officer compared to a department that has been educated in following policies more than personal discretion.In fact, from what I aphorism there is not much research on the effects of discretion at all. It seems like it is a topic that is overlooked when researching the effectiveness of a department. I feel like before more solutions are found on how to correct the problem of discretion, more research needs to be done on how discretion plays a role in every day policing. Until this research is conducted, all the articles published are on theories of discretion causing problems, and all of the solutions mentioned are methods to correct a problem that has not even been proven to be an issue yet.Police DiscretionDiscretion is defined as the authority to make a decision between two or more choices (Pollock, 2010). More specifically, it is defined as the capacity to identify and to document criminal and noncriminal events (Boivin &ump Cordeau, 2011). Every police officer has a great deal of discretion concerning when to use their authority, power, persuasion, or force. Depending on how an officer sees their duty to society will determine an officers discretion. Discretion leads to selective enforcement practices and may result in discrimination against certain groups of people or select individuals (Young, 2011).Most police officer discretion is exercised in situational situations with individuals (Sherman, 1984). Discrimination can lead to legal problems for an officer of the law. If discrimination due to an officers use of discretion results in a violation of due process it is a violation of the law (Young, 2010). Due process is the constitutionally mandated procedural steps designed to eliminate error in any governmental deprivation of liberty, life, or property (Pollock, 2010). One of the main concerns with using discretion is the possibility of it leading to a violation of due process by racial profiling.Types of Negative Police Discretion Racial profiling occurs when a police officer uses a profile as reasonable suspicion to stop a person with the intent to obtain consent to search their belongings (Pollock, 2010). These stops are usually traffic stops and the officer is looking to obtain consent to search the individuals automobile. The profile used is based on race. In these cases, an officer is using their discretion to target minority groups because they believe they are involved in criminal activities.The concern with using this profile is that racial stereotyping of minority groups will lead police to crack down on minorities more than on other groups. While police see the action of racial profiling as a normal police tactic, minority groups see the actions as racist (Young, 2011). Although most studies on police officer discretion is focused on racial profiling, it has also been shown that officers patrol hot spots. Hot spots are areas known to have a high rate of criminal activity. Focusing on hot spots is an officers discretion, because they are ignoring other areas that could potential produce criminal activities.All surveillance and enforcement efforts are focused on the hot area. Not only are officers ignoring other areas, but they have determined those areas are not as important as the hot spot. Hot spots can prove to be problematic if the criminal activity located in the hot spot before it was being patrolled is moved to a new location. The new location is prone to no police surveillance because all resources are focused on the old hot spot (Mastrofski, 2011). Discretion and the Use of Force Police have the uncontested right to use force when necessary to apprehend a suspect.If the force exceeds that which is necessary it is defined as excessive force and is illegal. An officers discretion on use of force is a based on judgment. They do not know if a judge will later rule an instance of use of force as excessive or not. There is a fine line between what is considered acceptable force and what is considered excessive force. All an officer can do is use their training to determine what is and what is not excessive force for the given circumstances (Pollock, 2010). The use of force is highly resistant to change, even after the Rodney King incident.Rodney King was a subject of police brutality. He was repeatedly beat with a baton by Los Angeles police officers, while other officers stood by watching without attempting to stop the excessive force. The pattern of excessive force may be so ingrained in some police department cultures that it remains unaffected by other high profile excess force cases, such as the Rodney King case. This pattern is termed the culture of force. The culture of force is also subject to an officers discretion. The culture of force is detrimental to a department.The Los Angeles Police Department in the 1980s and 1990s would act on a tip and destroy homes by breaking toilets, ripping sofas, an d spray painting LAPD Rules on the walls. These acts by the Los Angeles Police Department prove the culture of the department will have an influence on the individual officer (Pollock, 2010). Police departments have use-of-force policies that specify when force may be used and the proper level of force to be used under given circumstances. Most departments use a continuum-of-force approach that allows proportional force to the suspects resistance.The level of force by an officer increases in direct response to escalating resistance of the suspect. Policies such as this one have been put into place following many humiliating acts of excessive force. The policies are in place in an attempt to prevent future acts of excessive force (Pollock, 2010). Studies on Police Discretion National studies on police behavior have failed to adequately address the issue of police discretion. Due to the lack of important research data, analysts have developed suggestions on how to improve an individu al officers discretion by educating the entire department on proper use of discretion.The current suggestions are focused on officers in higher ranks developing an educational program for their department addressing areas of needs they have observed. They are the eyes of the department, and it is there job to know what their officers needs entail. Each department will have different needs based on the ethical viewpoints of their individual officers (Mastrofski, 2011). A study on police discretion conducted in Canada was implemented to try to eliminate negative police discretion. The study first mandated that all reported violations of the law be recorded.The results of the study had effective but temporary results. There were more records of assaults, robberies, thefts, and mischief. However, the study had no effects on reports of burglaries and car thefts. It is estimated that during the one year study police recorded 13,000 extra crimes. Although there was an increase in records, detection and reporting rates remained the same. The extra recordings were determined to be ineffective because the community reported that they did not notice a difference in the policing styles (Boivin &ump Cordeau, 2011). Ethical Dilemmas in Police DiscretionEthical dilemmas are situations in which it is difficult to make a decision, either because the right course of action is not clear or the right course of action carries some negative consequences. Ethical dilemmas entail the individual struggling with personal decision making, and sometimes results in a personal dilemma. Departmental policy can lead to personal dilemmas as well if it means going against an individual officers ethical system beliefs. This can lead to the officer seeking a change in law to match their own person views on the issue (Pollock, 2010).Utilitarianism is the ethical system that claims the greatest good is that which results in the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Utilitarianism therefore argues racial profiling is ethical because the end of drug interdictions justifies the means of harassing and inconveniencing the group. An argument against this justification is that when an officer uses racial profiling in decision making, the officers motives obscured. They do not concentrate on what is important for investigations. Behavior is what is important, not demographics (Pollock, 2010).Ethical formalism states that the only thing truly good is a good will. This ethical system does not agree with the idea of racial profiling. According to Pollock, it would mean that everyone should be stopped in the same way, so everyone would have to agree to be stopped numerous times every week. Since society most likely will not all agree that everyone should be stopped the same, racial profiling would not be an accepted practice in the ethical formalism system (Pollock, 2010). It is difficult to apply ethical systems to the use of deadly force and tasers. This is because each situa tion involving the use of force is different.At times an officer may benefit from the use of a taser, but other times the use, or threat of use, of a deadly weapon is more effective. Officers may argue that tasers do not always benefit the suspect because tasers do not always stop people. Departmental policies usually overrule ethics in the use of force. This is because officers have a duty of protection, so if they can accomplish their task without hurting the individual their duty would require the lesser use of force. Every officer has a duty to prevent crime. If they feel an individual is a criminal based on race, then formal policies are going to conflict with their ethics.In other words, if an officer believes racial profiling is an effective method of policing their ethics are going to conflict with formal policies. An effective method to correct this conflict has been to educate officers on evidence that proves stopping minorities based on their race are less likely to resul t in criminal activity than stops based on behavioral-based criteria. Even with education, an officers ethics can still prevail over evidence learned in training. This is because the officers ethical standards still tell them racial profiling is more effective (Pollock, 2010).Training to Eliminate Unethical Police Discretion Practices Efforts to eliminate racial discrimination in the police culture are in the form of new officer recruitment and training and taught through patrol work. These measures are taken to eliminate negative discretion, such as racial profiling, by developing better relationships with the community regardless of the racial composition. The goal is to make police-citizen interactions more frequent, varied, and dispersed throughout the community (Mastrofski, 2011). A suggestion was made on how to police hot spots by Mastrofski.He suggested that instead of having officers stationed in hot spots with full personal discretion on how they police the area, they shoul d be told how long to patrol the area or told what tactics to use in the area. This will eliminate complete personal discretion by the officers patrolling the hot spot areas. The time limit of policing the hot spot is to reduce the amount of neglect other areas in the community experience due to the policing of hot spot areas. The goal of this plan is to continue with the crack downs in hot spot zones without neglecting other areas in the community (Mastrofski, 2011).Conclusion Although this research paper focused on the negative effects of police discretion, there can also be positive effects. Things such as giving offenders of minor traffic violations less of a punishment or giving first time youth offenders less of a punishment to let them learn from their mistakes are examples of what can be termed positive police discretion. However, what is considered positive discretion to one person could be negative discretion to another. Every person has their own opinions about how police discretion should be handled.Some may think police should not be entitled to use discretion and every department should have policies the officers should follow instead. Other people may like that police have the use of discretion which could lead to a warning for a minor traffic violation instead of a fine. The topic of police discretion in relation to ethical dilemmas is also a heated debate. Since people have different ethics every police officer will patrol a little different. It has been suggested that police departments educate their officers to be more uniform in their policing.Not only would this eliminate some of the negative discretion practices officers may have developed, it would also put all the officers on the same page with the way the department would like to have the community policed (Mastrofski, 2011). The concept of police discretion is a large topic of conversation among researchers. The problem I see with the topic of conversation is there is not a lot of res earch done on the actual affects of the individual discretion of each officer compared to a department that has been educated in following policies more than personal discretion.In fact, from what I saw there is not much research on the effects of discretion at all. It seems like it is a topic that is overlooked when researching the effectiveness of a department. I feel like before more solutions are found on how to correct the problem of discretion, more research needs to be done on how discretion plays a role in every day policing. Until this research is conducted, all the articles published are on theories of discretion causing problems, and all of the solutions mentioned are methods to correct a problem that has not even been proven to be an issue yet.