Police Discretion Research Paper

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Discretion itself means “the freedom to decide what should be done in a particular situation”. Discretion is the judgment that an offense has been committed, so the officer must make a discretionary decision, to take certain enforcement actions. Discretion is necessary for fairness because as outlined in this reading “discretion is necessary because limited resources make it impossible to enforce all laws against all offenders and the strict enforcement of the law would have harsh and intolerable results”. What this means is that to enforce al the laws on offenders would make it impossible to do with the limited resources reason being discretion is a key also because the strict enforcements of the law would be worse to go along with. It is…show more content…
A fear while using discretion is that it may lead to “arbitrary, corrupt or unethical behavior” A problem also is that some officers do not use discretion for example, the case given in this reading involving the criminal liability of a police officer for obstructing justice because problems with his discretion not to investigate a number of serious driving offences caused by another off duty police officer. This police officer didn’t use the proper police discretion he did not administer a breathalyzer when the off duty police officer was under the influence. Discretion is when someone commits an offence and a police officer is to decide what to do next for example in a car crash if someone was driving impaired a police officer’s job is to administer a breathalyzer to see why this had taken place. As stated in the conclusion “to promote fair outcomes, the exercise of powers must also be based on just principles”. Police officers are given the power to decide whether they intend on practicing discretion or to let someone go. This is fair because there are guidelines that police officers are to

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