Criminal Justice 1010

Professor Greg Butler

Sydney Ddwards

Do you believe that police officers should exercise professional discretion?

 Discretion is described as Police discretion is a vague term that has an

appropriately vague definition. It is defined as the decision-making power afforded to

police officers that allows them to decide if they want to pursue police procedure or simply

let someone off with a warning. How it looks in practice is different from situation to

situation (Hirby).

Police officers are forced to make difficult decisions everyday. The steps they take

while to come to these decisions can have a negative or positive outcome in those situations

they are in. It is important for police officers to have discretion because without it there

would be a lot of unnecessary arrest Officer discretion is a powerful, basic tool in policing.

Removing officer discretion by creating "must arrest" offenses would result in too many

unnecessary arrests, while creating "can't arrest" offenses would result in people ignoring

the existing laws (Hawk). If there are what Hawk calls must arrest and cant arrest

there comes the question of who would be responsible or say which is which. In my opinion

that would get messy and a lot of officers would have disagreements on which offenses

needed an arrest. One of the reasons police have discretion is so they may take the totality

of the circumstances into consideration while investigating a particular incident to help

determine the need for an arrest. While many crimes are fairly straightforward, there are

also those investigations which require consideration of other issues (Hawk). I like how

Officer Hawk brought up the point of how many crimes are straightforward but there are

some that need more investigation. Officers need to have discretion so they can process

those crimes to the extent that is satisfactory to them. He also gives a great example of how

having must arrests could effect society. Now, imagine that police aren't allowed to arrest
anyone for driving with a revoked driver's license officers may only cite the driver and

tow the car. What is the appropriate course of action when you have stopped a driver who

has ten prior Driving While Revoked citations on his/her record, but has decided to drive to

the corner store for a six-pack of beer? (Hawk). In that example the person most likely

doesnt care if he gets caught because he knows he wont go to jail. The biggest punishment

in that case would be that he was cited. That results in him probably not ever wanting to get

his license back on track and he is still going to drive on a revoked license because the

punishment isnt severe enough. If the officer in that situation was able to use their

discretion that probably would still tow the car and take that individual to jail. After the

individual would probably think hard about getting behind the wheel of a car again since

the consequences are greater.

Using discretion definitely does help with public safety and the practice of law

enforcement. It can create a grey area for some officers who arent sure which choice would

be ethical but I think that an officer shouldnt second guess there instincts since that most

of the choices they make everyday are based out of instincts that theyve developed either

on the job or from the things they learned in police training. At the end of the day if the are

using discretion for the greater good of the areas they are working in they should need to

feel like they havent made the right decisions when arresting or not arresting an individual.

Most police activity occurs in private, away from the public=s view. This creates a situation

that allows police officers discretion in the way they think about what they see and how

they handle those with whom they come in contact (Aplert, Dunham, Stroshine, Bennett,

and MacDonald, 2004, page i).

 I also think that the use of discretion assists the criminal justice system but at times

it can get messy. People will always disagree on what an officer should of done in certain

situations its easy to say what you would of done differently when allowed the opportunity

to think thoroughly out your decision before making it and then pointing fingers at the

officer who in your opinion made the wrong choice. They werent there and also had more

time to think through their choices and what consequences would come from that action.

An officer wouldnt be given that opportunity. The basically have split seconds before

making discretionary choices. Discretion also helps the justice system because it allow

officers to let those go whom they feel dont need to be arrested which would back up our

court system with unnecessary cases and basically waste more peoples time.

However, discretion does raise ethical issues. You cant always have ethically perfect

police officers. In the news and media there has been a lot of stories covered on racist cops.

I think that is raises a huge ethical issue in this country. While not every cop is racist it does

everyone starts to think that way and it just has made the whole situation worse. Not every

person of a certain race commits crimes either. Police discretion is also one of the reasons

behind what some people see as racial profiling, as police officers are trained to use their

discretion in line with statistics or perceived statistics. It is often perceived that people of

certain races are more likely to be guilty of crimes, and this may factor into police choices

(Hirby). Police discretion isnt a perfect system and there will always be issues with what is

ethical.
 Like I just said discretion isnt a perfect system but its better than the have must

arrests and non-arrest policy put into place. There is always room for improvement in the

discretionary system and Im sure that there will be improvements added in the future for

police officers to follow. That being said I think that we need to keep police discretion let

the officer choose what they think should be the result of an individual who speeds or

drives on a suspended license. It should be mainly there choice what happens to the person

because maybe they are compliant and dont deserve to be cited.

 Works cited

Do police officers have too much or too little discretion? PoliceOne, 19 Feb. 2014,
www.policeone.com/investigations/articles/6878880-Do-police-officers-have-too-much-
or-too-little-discretion/.
Alpert, Geoffrey P, et al. Police Officers' Decision Making and Discretion: Forming
Suspicion and Making a Stop. Feb. 2006, www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/213004.pdf.
Hirby, J. Police Discretion Definition. The Law Dictionary,
thelawdictionary.org/article/police-discretion-definition/.