Police Discretion Analysis

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The criminal justice system exists today within all societies and despite the differences our societies might have, the criminal justice system shows many similarities. The criminal justice system is a system, which seeks both fairness and impartiality and is essentially “a system of laws and rulings which protect community members and their property” (ABS, 2006). The criminal justice system comprises of 3 aspects; police courts and corrections (Dennis, 1977). Despite the criminal justice system’s aim to run a fair and impartial system of law, this is not always the case, this can be especially seen in all three aspects of the criminal justice system (Dennis, 1977). Through the aspect of the police, it can be seen that our ability to access…show more content…
Police discretion can be described as a situation where each individual police officer is given both the power and responsibility to make the right decision and apply it to the given situation (Gorham, 2004). Despite the necessity of discretion to ensure the best outcome, with the freedom that police discretion gives to officers, the risk of losing fairness and impartiality is heightened to a great extent on the frontline (Prenzler, T, 2009). Police discretion is used throughout different aspects of their career, this includes decisions of what should be done in certain situations, for every offence, deciding if there was an appropriate reason to explain said criminal offence. Not just this, but discretion also comes into play when considering how much force to be used, however despite only meant to be using enough force to control a situation, police can dictate how much is to be used, which runs the risk of excessive amounts to be used, for individual rights to fair and impartial justice to be taken away (Wetendorf et al, 2003) (Geller et al, 1959). These risks can be highlighted by the fact that 23.3% of all counts of misconduct were due to excessive force used by police officers (Police Misconduct, 2009). Therefore police discretion has the ability to extinguish fairness and impartiality, decreasing the…show more content…
Racial profiling occurs from the result of racism or racial prejudice by members of the police force, therefore impacting their role has protectors or law enforcers. Racial profiling is where police officers connect or attach a negative stigma and view to a certain race (Geller et al, 1959) (Chan, 2011). This not only generalises the behaviour of an entire from the actions of individuals within the race, but it reduces the accessibility to fair and impartial justice for certain races (Gorham, 2004). Racial profiling involves law enforcement using the basis of race or ethnicity to suspect someone of committing a crime. Ways of which racial profiling can be done includes excessive monitoring and over policing, unfair suspicion, wrongful and false accusation, as well as relying on race to determine the potential action of someone through their race (Chan, 2011). Despite the admittance of racial profiling being a problem, it still manages to commonly exist and therefore impact the ability for some races to have access to impartial and fair justice. Just how influential racial profiling can be in the police aspect of the criminal justice system can be specifically noticed in the case in 1991 where 4 African- American men were stopped and put through countless tests trying to find something wrong because they
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